It is an independent group, but which nevertheless maintains relations with the Ukrainian armed forces. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, a group of volunteers, the “Bratstvo” battalion – “brotherhood” in Ukrainian – has formed itself into a special forces unit, to carry out sabotage operations in the occupied Ukrainian territories and on the soil of the Russian Federation. This “hybrid” status allows kyiv to deny any responsibility for the actions they carry out, while promoting them when they are successful. “Ukrainian military commanders have long said that they have no shortage of soldiers for the war, but they nevertheless welcomed into their ranks thousands of volunteers, including foreign citizens. Many of them, like the Chechens, are refugees from Russia”, reports the New York Times.
Subdivided into small groups of four to five soldiers, the men of the battalion, veterans of the Donbass war or new recruits with no military experience, identify the safest access points in Russia by studying the movement of cattle or by asking of people who smuggled before the war. “We have shown that we are capable of entering Russian territory and shown the Russians that the Ukrainians can act, testifies one of the members to The Observer. When the Russians realize that saboteurs are at work on their territory, they are obliged to deploy a lot of soldiers to find them. It demoralizes the enemy.”
Collect intelligence
Asked by The world, one of the members says that a large part of the time is devoted to gathering intelligence ahead of operations, via the activation of a network of supporters. This gives the example of a mission carried out in the occupied part of the region of Zaporijia, in the south-east of Ukraine, along the Dnieper. “We set up a base not far from the Russian positions, along the banks, explains the soldier. local.”
The operations of the group, which describes itself as a “revolutionary Christian community”, are not always successful. In February, The Guardian reported the failure of a mission to shoot down a helicopter carrying Kremlin caciques. Shortly after Christmas, the Russian media then Ukrainians also reported that four “saboteurs”, aged 19 to 34, had been “liquidated” by the FSB, the Russian security service, in the Briansk oblast.
The latter were carrying machine guns, communications equipment and 40 kilos of explosives. Horrifying photos and videos of their shredded bodies were being broadcast by Russian networks at the same time. The four killed fighters “circumvented the border guards and entered Russian territory, where they were somehow spotted and where they fought the enemy”, the AFP told AFP. party leader Dmytro Korchinsky. “The Russians claim that they (the Ukrainians) were surrounded and offered to surrender,” he added, calling the refusal “normal” for them. On Tuesday, several hundred people attended their funeral in kyiv. “To tell the truth, our operations are twice as safe as those of the Ukrainian armed forces, however, assures one of the members. It seems to be a very dangerous job, but we are preparing for it very seriously.”