The Enemy Within: Ukraine’s Secret War of Sabotage Inside Russia
By Matthew Parish
Tuesday 20 October 2026
There is another war being fought between Ukraine and Russia, one that rarely appears on the maps of military analysts, that does not involve the traditional movements of armies and that may ultimately prove almost as consequential as the battles being fought across the Donbas. It is a war of clandestine operatives, railway saboteurs, intelligence agents, disaffected Russian soldiers and ordinary citizens who have decided, for reasons ranging from moral outrage to political conviction, to participate in the destruction of Vladimir Putin’s military machine from within. Some operate under the direction of Ukrainian intelligence services, others belong to pro-Ukrainian resistance organisations and still others appear to act independently, motivated by their own opposition to the Kremlin. Their identities are generally unknown, their activities are often impossible to verify independently and their ultimate objectives do not always coincide. Nevertheless they represent a threat to the Russian state that its extensive security apparatus has struggled to eliminate.
The existence of these individuals raises questions about the character of modern warfare and the vulnerability of authoritarian political systems. Russia has traditionally considered itself a master of clandestine operations, employing assassinations, political subversion, cyber warfare, intelligence penetration and sabotage against its foreign adversaries. Yet the Russian Federation now finds itself confronted by an adversary that has learned some of these lessons and developed its own distinctive approach to conducting warfare behind enemy lines. For the Russian authorities, the disturbing discovery is that the territory from which they launch their war against Ukraine can no longer be presumed secure. For Ukraine, the clandestine struggle offers the possibility of imposing military and economic costs upon Russia without having to match its superior resources in a conventional confrontation.
The result is a strange inversion of the Kremlin’s own understanding of war. Moscow imagined that it could invade a neighbouring country, occupy its territory, devastate its infrastructure and terrorise its civilian population while preserving the ordinary tranquillity of life within Russia itself. Ukraine’s clandestine operations challenge that assumption. They demonstrate that an aggressor cannot necessarily confine the consequences of its aggression to the territory of its victim and that the geographical dimensions of modern warfare are increasingly determined by intelligence capabilities rather than the positions of infantry and artillery.
The emergence of an underground war
The phenomenon began to attract significant attention shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Railway infrastructure was damaged, military recruitment offices were attacked and mysterious fires occurred at facilities associated with Russia’s war effort. Some incidents were ordinary accidents, others were attributed to Ukrainian intelligence and still others were claimed by Russian anti-war activists. What was initially dismissed by Moscow as isolated criminality gradually acquired the characteristics of a persistent campaign against the logistical and administrative foundations of Russia’s military operations.
Among the earliest identifiable movements was the Russian organisation known as Stop the Wagons, which presented itself as a decentralised network of railway saboteurs committed to obstructing the transportation of military supplies to Ukraine. Another organisation, the Anarcho-Communist Combat Organisation, or BOAK, emerged from Russia’s radical political underground. Its participants argued that opposing Putin’s war required something more substantial than issuing statements of disapproval or participating in demonstrations that the security services could easily suppress. They regarded direct action against the machinery of war as a form of political resistance, although the extent of their operations and the credibility of particular claims have frequently remained uncertain.
There is a certain historical irony in this development. The Soviet Union celebrated the partisan fighters who disrupted German communications and attacked German military logistics during the Second World War. Their exploits became central to Soviet patriotic mythology, with schoolchildren encouraged to admire the courage of clandestine resistance against an invading army. Contemporary Russian saboteurs have sometimes appropriated precisely this historical tradition, presenting their activities as the moral successors to those wartime partisans. Putin’s government, meanwhile, treats comparable acts of resistance against its own military apparatus as terrorism. The historical parallel is not exact, but the competition over its meaning is revealing.
The distinction between Russian opposition activists and agents working directly for Ukraine is nevertheless important. A Russian citizen who damages military infrastructure because he opposes the invasion is not necessarily a Ukrainian intelligence operative. Nor is every mysterious explosion evidence of a sophisticated clandestine network controlled from Kyiv. The Russian authorities have a political incentive to attribute domestic dissent to foreign manipulation, thereby denying that opposition to their war might arise spontaneously among their own population. Ukrainian organisations, conversely, may have an incentive to exaggerate the reach and effectiveness of their underground supporters. Both tendencies complicate any serious assessment of the scale of the clandestine war.
The railway war
The railways occupy a position of exceptional importance in Russian military organisation. Russia is an enormous country whose armed forces have historically depended upon rail transport to move heavy equipment, ammunition, fuel and personnel across vast distances. Its roads are comparatively inadequate for moving large quantities of military supplies over long distances, while its railway network remains one of the fundamental instruments through which the Russian state exercises control over its territory. This creates an obvious vulnerability: an army dependent upon an extensive transport infrastructure may be powerful at the front while remaining surprisingly susceptible to disruption behind it.
Throughout 2026, the pro-Ukrainian partisan organisation ATESH has reported a succession of sabotage operations inside Russia, particularly against railway infrastructure supporting Russian military formations. In September, the movement claimed responsibility for disrupting railway communications in the Voronezh region and interfering with military logistics around Taganrog. In October it reported damaging a locomotive in the Voronezh region, allegedly interrupting supplies intended for Russian forces fighting near Kupiansk. These accounts have been reported by Ukrainian media, although the full extent of the damage and the precise effects upon Russian military operations cannot invariably be established independently.
What makes these operations strategically interesting is not necessarily the quantity of equipment destroyed. It is the cumulative burden they impose upon the Russian military administration. A railway that has been damaged must be inspected, repaired and subsequently protected against further interference. Security personnel must be assigned to infrastructure that would otherwise require relatively little guarding. Supplies may be delayed, alternative transport arrangements must be devised and commanders must account for an additional category of uncertainty. The saboteur seeks to compel the state to expend disproportionately greater resources protecting itself than the saboteur expends attacking it.
This is the economics of asymmetric warfare. A state possessing enormous military resources may nevertheless find itself inconvenienced by comparatively inexpensive attacks against infrastructure that is difficult to protect comprehensively. The strategic significance lies less in the individual incident than in its repetition across a sufficiently wide geographical area. Russia cannot station an infantry battalion beside every railway installation or deploy sophisticated surveillance equipment at every possible point of vulnerability. The larger the territory requiring protection, the greater the burden upon its internal security apparatus.
Yet there are limits to what this strategy can achieve. Russia possesses a substantial railway repair capability, military engineering resources and considerable experience in maintaining transport systems under difficult conditions. A few damaged railway installations will not destroy the Russian war economy. For the clandestine campaign to become strategically decisive, its disruptive effects must interact with other military pressures, including Ukrainian conventional operations, long-range strikes, economic sanctions and the progressive exhaustion of Russian resources. Sabotage is most effective as part of a wider military strategy rather than as a substitute for one.
Operation Spiderweb and the humiliation of Russian security
The most spectacular example of Ukraine’s capacity to operate inside Russia remains Operation Spiderweb, conducted on 1 June 2025. The Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, orchestrated a series of coordinated drone attacks against Russian military airfields, including installations situated thousands of kilometres from the Ukrainian border. The operation involved an extraordinary degree of planning, reportedly extending over eighteen months, and demonstrated that the Russian military’s strategic aviation assets were not necessarily safe merely because they were stationed deep within Russian territory.
The operation was remarkable for its imaginative use of relatively inexpensive technology against extraordinarily valuable military equipment. Small drones concealed within transported structures were deployed near Russian military airfields, enabling attacks against strategic bombers that Russia had employed to launch cruise missiles against Ukrainian cities. Kyiv initially claimed that 41 aircraft had been struck, although subsequent Western assessments suggested a considerably lower figure of approximately twenty aircraft damaged and around ten destroyed. Satellite imagery nevertheless established that substantial damage had occurred, making the operation a genuine military achievement rather than merely a propaganda exercise.
For Moscow, the implications were deeply embarrassing. A country that had developed an enormous domestic security apparatus and that routinely presented its intelligence services as among the most formidable in the world had failed to detect preparations for attacks against some of its most valuable military installations. The operation demonstrated that technological ingenuity could overcome geographical distance, physical security arrangements and the presumptions underlying traditional military planning. It also undermined the belief that Russia’s vast hinterland provided a sanctuary in which its strategic forces could operate without interference from Ukraine.
There is an important distinction between Operation Spiderweb and the activities of independent Russian resistance organisations. Spiderweb was an organised Ukrainian intelligence operation conducted against explicitly military targets, whereas the railway resistance movements may contain a mixture of Ukrainian-directed agents, ideologically motivated activists and opportunistic individuals. Nevertheless, the two forms of clandestine activity are mutually reinforcing in their psychological effects. Both oblige Russia to regard its own territory as an increasingly insecure environment and both demonstrate the difficulties of protecting an extensive military infrastructure against unconventional threats.
The ingenuity of Spiderweb also illustrates a broader transformation in contemporary warfare. Military power is no longer determined exclusively by the possession of expensive aircraft, enormous armoured formations and sophisticated missile systems. It increasingly depends upon the capacity to integrate intelligence, commercially available technologies, decentralised initiative and imaginative planning. In this respect Ukraine has developed capabilities that compensate, at least in part, for its disadvantages in conventional military strength.
Who are the people carrying out these operations?
The identities and motivations of those who participate in clandestine operations inside Russia are necessarily difficult to establish. Some are almost certainly professional intelligence operatives or individuals recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services. Others are members of organised resistance groups with their own political programmes. A further category consists of Russian citizens who have become sufficiently disillusioned with their government to undertake dangerous acts of resistance without necessarily belonging to any coherent political organisation.
The Russian opposition is far from ideologically homogeneous. It includes liberals who favour parliamentary democracy, nationalists who oppose Putin’s personal rule, anarchists, socialists, disaffected military veterans and members of ethnic minority communities who resent Moscow’s centralised authority. These individuals may have radically different visions of Russia’s future, yet some share the conviction that the continuation of the war in Ukraine represents a catastrophe for their own country. They may cooperate with Ukraine, or simply welcome Ukrainian military successes, without necessarily subscribing to every aspect of Kyiv’s political objectives.
Particularly interesting is the position of Russian military personnel who have become disaffected with the war. A soldier who has witnessed the incompetence of his commanders, experienced the brutality of military discipline or concluded that the invasion serves no legitimate Russian national interest may become receptive to arguments that would previously have seemed inconceivable. Defection, the communication of military information and participation in clandestine resistance are all possible manifestations of this alienation. Such conduct is exceptionally dangerous in an authoritarian wartime state, however, and the existence of isolated cases should not be mistaken for evidence of a general collapse in Russian military loyalty.
The FSB regularly announces arrests of individuals accused of working for Ukrainian intelligence. In October 2026, for example, Russian authorities reported detaining a Swedish national in the Pskov region, accusing him of preparing sabotage and terrorist operations on Ukraine’s behalf. The allegations were accompanied by material presented in Russian state media, but the essential details have not been independently established and Ukraine has not confirmed the account. Such cases illustrate both the Russian government’s concern about clandestine infiltration and the difficulties of distinguishing genuine intelligence discoveries from politically convenient accusations.
It is equally important to remember that Russia’s security services operate within a political system in which confessions can be obtained under conditions that raise serious questions about their reliability. The presentation of an arrested individual on television does not establish that the official narrative is accurate. Intelligence organisations have incentives to exaggerate their success, fabricate connections between otherwise unrelated incidents and portray domestic critics as agents of a foreign enemy. The Kremlin benefits politically from depicting resistance to its policies as treachery orchestrated abroad rather than acknowledging that Russian citizens might independently reject the war.
The historical experience of authoritarian states suggests that this tendency can become self-defeating. When dissent is systematically equated with foreign espionage, the authorities gradually lose the ability to distinguish genuine security threats from ordinary political opposition. Their intelligence organisations become increasingly preoccupied with demonstrating loyalty to the political leadership rather than providing accurate assessments of the population’s attitudes. The resulting deterioration in intelligence quality can create further opportunities for precisely the clandestine adversaries whom the security services are supposed to identify.
The psychological consequences of sabotage
The greatest significance of clandestine warfare may lie in its effect upon the psychology of the Russian state. Putin’s political authority rests partly upon the proposition that his government guarantees order, security and stability. Russian citizens are encouraged to accept restrictions upon their political freedoms in exchange for protection from the chaos allegedly associated with democratic experimentation and Western influence. An underground campaign of sabotage challenges this bargain by demonstrating that even a highly coercive state may be incapable of guaranteeing the physical security of its most important institutions.
The authoritarian ruler faces an uncomfortable dilemma. If he publicly acknowledges the extent of clandestine resistance, he risks admitting that his government is less competent than its propaganda suggests. If he suppresses information about sabotage, he risks appearing dishonest when incidents become impossible to conceal. If he responds with increasingly extensive repression, he may generate further resentment among a population already burdened by military mobilisation, economic uncertainty and the steady accumulation of wartime casualties.
There is also the corrosive problem of distrust. Military commanders become suspicious of their subordinates, railway officials may fear accusations of collaboration and security officers may begin looking for conspiracies where none exist. The consequences can extend far beyond the immediate damage inflicted by an individual clandestine operation. An organisation in which everybody suspects everybody else is unlikely to function efficiently, particularly when it is simultaneously required to conduct an expensive and technologically demanding war.
Russian history provides a wealth of examples of the destructive consequences of political paranoia. The Stalinist purges damaged the Soviet military leadership before the Second World War, while successive Soviet governments devoted enormous resources to identifying ideological enemies within their own society. Putin’s Russia has not recreated the Soviet system in every respect, but its increasingly expansive security legislation and hostility towards political dissent reflect familiar authoritarian instincts. A prolonged campaign of sabotage threatens to intensify those instincts, potentially weakening the institutional competence upon which the Russian war effort depends.
Nevertheless, one should be cautious about assuming that these developments will produce a popular revolution. The Russian population has demonstrated considerable capacity to accommodate extraordinary political circumstances, while the state’s coercive institutions remain formidable. Dissatisfaction with the war does not automatically translate into willingness to resist it, particularly when the consequences of resistance may include imprisonment, torture or death. Clandestine movements can embarrass authoritarian governments and complicate their military operations without necessarily possessing the organisational capacity to overthrow them.
Sabotage, assassination and the laws of war
There is a moral and legal dimension to this clandestine struggle that deserves careful consideration. Ukraine is defending itself against an invasion that violates the most fundamental principles of the international legal order. Its right of self-defence is not confined automatically to the territory recognised internationally as Ukrainian. Military operations conducted against legitimate Russian military objectives may therefore be lawful even when those objectives are situated inside the Russian Federation. This does not, however, mean that every act undertaken in Ukraine’s name is necessarily lawful or morally defensible.
International humanitarian law requires distinction between combatants and civilians, together with respect for proportionality and precautions against unnecessary civilian harm. A military aircraft preparing to launch missiles against Ukrainian cities presents a substantially different legal question from a passenger train carrying civilians. Railway infrastructure may become a legitimate military objective where its use effectively contributes to military action and attacking it offers a definite military advantage. Nevertheless, attacks must still take account of foreseeable civilian casualties and the wider consequences of damaging infrastructure used for both military and civilian purposes.
This distinction becomes especially important where clandestine operations involve explosives in populated areas or attacks against individuals whose military status is disputed. Ukraine has been associated with several high-profile assassinations of Russian military figures since 2022, including operations targeting senior officers implicated in the conduct of the war. Some attacks have been acknowledged by Ukrainian security sources, while responsibility for others remains contested. The circumstances of each operation matter profoundly: a serving military commander actively participating in hostilities occupies a different legal position from a civilian political commentator or an administrative official who does not directly participate in warfare.
Nor should the danger to Russian civilians be treated as irrelevant merely because their government initiated the war. In June 2025, the collapse of a bridge in Russia’s Bryansk region caused a passenger train accident that killed seven people and injured many more. Russian authorities blamed Ukrainian sabotage, although Kyiv did not accept responsibility and the public evidence did not independently establish who carried out the attack. Whatever its authorship, the incident demonstrates why clandestine violence against transport infrastructure requires particularly careful legal and moral scrutiny.
The legal status of the saboteurs themselves is similarly complex. Members of armed forces operating clandestinely may face questions about combatant status and the protections available upon capture. Civilians who directly participate in hostilities may lose protection against attack for the duration of that participation and may be prosecuted under applicable domestic criminal law, even where their conduct does not itself constitute a war crime. The romantic image of the partisan hero should therefore not obscure the serious legal consequences and personal dangers confronting people who participate in such operations.
Ukraine’s strategic interest is best served by maintaining a clear distinction between attacks designed to reduce Russia’s military capacity and violence directed indiscriminately against the Russian population. The former may be an indispensable element of legitimate national defence, while the latter would undermine the moral and legal principles upon which Ukraine’s international support depends. A country resisting an unlawful invasion does not surrender its obligation to observe the laws of war, and neither does the aggressor acquire immunity for its military installations merely because they are situated within its internationally recognised borders.
The economic consequences for Russia
The Russian war economy is sustained by a complicated network of industrial production, extractive industries, energy supplies, military procurement, transport services and financial arrangements. Sabotage potentially affects several elements of this system, although its impact is often indirect and difficult to quantify. An interruption in railway transport may delay the delivery of military equipment, while damage to specialised industrial facilities may require replacement components that are difficult to obtain because of sanctions or technological restrictions.
The economic consequences are magnified where attacks compel organisations to divert expenditure from productive activities towards security. Russian enterprises supporting the military may be required to employ additional guards, strengthen physical protection, introduce surveillance arrangements or maintain redundant transport capacity. Such measures do not necessarily appear in the dramatic imagery of burning equipment or damaged buildings, but they represent real economic costs. Money spent protecting existing infrastructure is money unavailable for expanding production or improving the effectiveness of the armed forces.
One should nevertheless distinguish physical sabotage conducted by clandestine operatives from Ukraine’s increasingly extensive campaign of long-range drone and missile attacks against Russian industrial and energy installations. Both may form part of a wider strategy intended to weaken Russia’s capacity to sustain the war, but they involve different operational methods and different categories of military risk. A refinery attacked by drones launched from Ukrainian territory has not necessarily been sabotaged by agents operating inside Russia. Confusing the two phenomena exaggerates the size of the clandestine network and obscures the particular contribution that internal resistance can make.
The strategic objective is not necessarily to bring the entire Russian economy to a halt. Such an outcome would be extraordinarily difficult to achieve and might produce humanitarian consequences inconsistent with Ukraine’s interests. Rather, the purpose of attacks against genuine military objectives is to increase the marginal cost of continuing the invasion. If the Russian state must spend progressively more resources maintaining the military capabilities needed to occupy Ukrainian territory, the economic foundations of its aggression become correspondingly less secure.
This is particularly significant because the Russian economy must simultaneously meet civilian expectations and sustain a prolonged military mobilisation. Putin cannot indefinitely allocate resources to the armed forces without imposing costs elsewhere, although the precise limits of Russia’s fiscal and industrial resilience remain uncertain. Every additional expense generated by clandestine resistance contributes to those pressures, even if its individual effect is modest.
Can Russia defeat the saboteurs?
The Russian security services possess considerable advantages in their struggle against clandestine resistance. They have extensive surveillance powers, access to telecommunications records, broad authority to detain suspects and an institutional culture that places relatively few restrictions upon coercive interrogation. The combination is formidable, particularly against inexperienced activists who lack the training and organisational support available to professional intelligence officers.
Yet authoritarian intelligence organisations also possess characteristic weaknesses. They may become overconfident in the effectiveness of their surveillance systems, rely excessively upon coercive methods and interpret politically inconvenient evidence through ideological assumptions. Their enormous bureaucracies can generate rivalries between competing agencies, while the pressure to demonstrate success may encourage the pursuit of easily identified suspects rather than the most serious threats. These weaknesses are not unique to Russia, but they may be particularly pronounced in a political system that discourages institutional criticism.
There is also a fundamental asymmetry between the responsibilities of the defender and those of the clandestine attacker. Russian security organisations must protect a vast range of military installations and associated infrastructure, while their adversaries need only demonstrate that some important facilities remain vulnerable. Successful protection is largely invisible, whereas a serious security failure can become an international embarrassment. This creates a persistent political disadvantage for the Russian authorities, irrespective of how many attempted attacks they manage to prevent.
It would be mistaken, however, to imagine that Ukrainian clandestine operations can proceed indefinitely without adaptation by the Russian state. Security procedures will evolve, military facilities will be better protected and intelligence organisations will learn from their failures. The experience of Operation Spiderweb is unlikely to be repeated in precisely the same form against an adversary now aware of the vulnerabilities it exposed. The struggle is therefore one of continuous adaptation, in which each side attempts to anticipate and overcome the other’s innovations.
Nor should all incidents attributed to Ukrainian networks be accepted uncritically. Wartime information is notoriously unreliable, and clandestine operations are particularly susceptible to exaggeration because their participants cannot readily disclose evidence without compromising themselves. A credible assessment must distinguish verified military damage from partisan claims, Russian accusations and incidents whose causes remain unknown. The existence of a genuine clandestine campaign does not mean that every fire, industrial accident or unexplained explosion inside Russia belongs to it.
Russia’s internal contradictions
Perhaps the most interesting political implication of the sabotage campaign concerns the relationship between the Russian state and Russian society. The Kremlin presents the invasion of Ukraine as a national undertaking enjoying widespread public support. It characterises its armed forces as defenders of Russian civilisation against an allegedly hostile West and insists that opposition to the war represents a form of disloyalty to the nation.
Yet the existence of Russian citizens willing to resist the war through clandestine means complicates this narrative. Such individuals reject the assumption that loyalty to Russia necessarily entails loyalty to Putin or support for his military ambitions. Some evidently believe that Russia’s long-term interests would be better served by the defeat of its invasion than by the continuation of a destructive conflict whose original political objectives have proved elusive.
There is a philosophical distinction here between patriotism and obedience. A patriot may love his country while despising its government, just as an individual may consider himself loyal to the political community to which he belongs while rejecting the policies pursued in its name. Authoritarian rulers characteristically attempt to abolish this distinction, presenting themselves as the embodiment of the nation and treating criticism of their personal authority as an attack upon the country itself.
Russian anti-war partisans challenge this conception of political legitimacy. Their argument, whether expressed explicitly or implicit in their actions, is that a government conducting an unjust war may itself become the principal threat to the country it claims to represent. This is a controversial proposition, particularly when resistance entails violence, but it belongs to a longstanding tradition of political thought concerning the limits of governmental authority and the circumstances in which resistance to the state may be justified.
It also creates an uncomfortable problem for Russian propaganda. Moscow routinely invokes the heroic legacy of resistance against foreign occupation, but contemporary Russian dissidents can appeal to some of the same principles of individual conscience and opposition to aggressive warfare. The Kremlin cannot easily concede the legitimacy of these arguments without undermining its claim that the Russian state’s current policies are synonymous with the interests of the Russian people.
The future of Ukraine’s invisible war
As the conflict continues into its fifth year, Ukraine’s clandestine activities inside Russia are likely to remain an important supplementary element of its military strategy. Their significance will depend less upon spectacular individual operations than upon the cumulative ability to degrade military infrastructure, obtain useful intelligence, complicate Russian logistics and force Moscow to allocate resources away from the front. Ukraine’s intelligence organisations have demonstrated considerable imagination, but their achievements should be assessed against measurable military effects rather than the dramatic character of their publicity.
The future of the internal Russian opposition is harder to predict. A sufficiently prolonged and unpopular war may encourage additional acts of resistance, particularly if economic conditions deteriorate or the Kremlin undertakes further mobilisation. Equally, increased repression may deter potential participants and fragment existing organisations. There is no reliable basis for assuming that the Russian underground will evolve into a nationwide revolutionary movement, although neither should its continuing existence be dismissed as politically insignificant.
One of the most important consequences may be the erosion of the distinction between the Russian home front and the Ukrainian battlefield. The Kremlin has sought to maintain that distinction because it allows the costs of military aggression to be presented to ordinary Russians as distant, manageable and largely abstract. Clandestine operations against military infrastructure inside Russia weaken this separation. They remind the Russian state that warfare is not simply a matter of issuing orders to armies operating beyond the country’s borders, but a process that can expose the aggressor’s own institutions to substantial disruption.
There remains a danger that an escalating clandestine conflict will encourage both governments to expand their domestic security powers, intensify surveillance and justify increasingly intrusive measures in the name of national survival. Ukraine must remain especially attentive to this possibility because its long-term political legitimacy depends upon preserving the distinction between a democratic society defending itself and an authoritarian state conducting a war of conquest. The development of effective intelligence capabilities need not entail abandoning the principles of accountable government.
The Russian state, for its part, faces a more fundamental dilemma. It can respond to sabotage with greater repression and more elaborate security arrangements, but these measures cannot eliminate the underlying political consequences of an increasingly costly war. A government may arrest individual opponents, strengthen the defences of military facilities and prosecute alleged collaborators, yet it cannot manufacture genuine public enthusiasm indefinitely by coercive means alone.
The clandestine struggle also demonstrates that military superiority cannot be understood simply by counting soldiers, artillery pieces, aircraft and tanks. Intelligence, political legitimacy, technological imagination and the willingness of individuals to take extraordinary personal risks all influence the balance between opposing states. These are difficult qualities to measure, but they may prove decisive in a prolonged conflict in which neither side possesses the resources to achieve an uncomplicated conventional victory.
The invisible front
There is something inherently unsettling about a war whose participants cannot easily be identified and whose activities take place far from the conventional battlefield. The saboteur may be an intelligence professional operating under an assumed identity, a Russian citizen who has lost faith in his government or a former soldier who has concluded that the war he was ordered to fight is a betrayal of his country. His motivations may combine patriotism, anger, ideological conviction and personal experience. What unites these otherwise different individuals is their willingness to act against the Russian military apparatus despite the potentially devastating consequences of discovery.
It would be romantic and inaccurate to imagine that all such people are heroes, that every alleged act of sabotage genuinely occurred or that clandestine violence is automatically justified by the political objectives of those responsible. Resistance movements are composed of imperfect human beings, intelligence organisations make mistakes and wartime propaganda frequently distorts the reality of events. Nevertheless, the documented operations conducted by Ukraine and the persistent reports of Russian anti-war resistance establish that the Russian state faces a genuine problem within its own borders.
For Vladimir Putin, this may be among the more bitter ironies of the war. He invaded Ukraine partly to demonstrate the overwhelming power of the Russian state, to reassert Moscow’s authority over its neighbours and to establish that resistance to Russian geopolitical ambitions was ultimately futile. Instead, his government now confronts a Ukrainian adversary capable of striking valuable military assets deep inside Russia, while some Russian citizens have become sufficiently alienated from the Kremlin to participate in resistance against its war.
The most important question is not whether these saboteurs can overthrow the Russian government. They probably cannot, at least not through clandestine violence alone. The question is whether their activities, combined with Ukraine’s wider military campaign and the accumulating costs of the invasion, can make the continuation of the war progressively more difficult for the Russian political leadership to sustain.
Modern wars are not won exclusively by the armies that fight at the front. They are also influenced by the political loyalties, economic vulnerabilities and institutional weaknesses of the societies that maintain those armies. Russia’s clandestine adversaries exploit this reality, reminding the Kremlin that enormous military power offers no guarantee against the determination of individuals operating beyond the reach of conventional warfare.
Putin intended Ukraine to discover the limitations of its sovereignty. Instead, Ukraine has begun to demonstrate the limitations of Russian power. The saboteurs inside Russia are not the whole of that story, but they are an increasingly important part of it. Their existence carries a message that must be deeply uncomfortable for a government that has built its reputation upon the mythology of omnipotent security: a state may control its borders, command its armies and imprison its political opponents without ever entirely controlling the consciences of the people who live within it.
