As Russia unleashed a massive offensive on Ukraine, civilians in the country were ready to join the Ukrainian military in mounting a bloody resistance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday morning that he would provide weapons to citizens who wanted to defend the country as Russian forces rolled in.
Uljana Zamaslo, an English teacher in Lviv, said civilians began preparing for an imminent war as Russia rolled troops into separatist-backed regions of Ukraine.
RUSSIA HAS ‘EVERY INTENTION OF BASICALLY DECAPITATING’ UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT
“People have been lining up to collect guns that are being given out, weapons that are being given out to the territorial defense organizations,” Zamaslo said. “[They] are saying, ‘OK, I went through my training, I’m ready to do my job.’”
As dawn broke Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed a violent assault on Ukraine, beginning an attack that promised widespread destruction.
Civilians were already picking up arms, said Roman Fontana, a combat veteran of Iraq and civilian-military adviser to Ukraine.
“For the Ukrainians, this is an existential fight. They are fighting for their survival,” Fontana said. “They are fighting for their very existence.”
He said ordinary civilians of all ages were prepared to defend their country, with a resolve that the overmatched Russian forces will likely lack.
“To me, that’s the large differentiating factor,” he told the Washington Examiner. “When you are at war, a winner is determined by the will to fight.”
Zamaslo said she was encouraged by the response.
“It’s nice to see that the plan that people were not all that certain about when it is being tested in this way, it functions,” she said.
Ukrainians are ready to conduct a long-term resistance campaign, Fontana said.
“They’re prepared. They’ve had go bags ready. They’ve stockpiled. They’ve been ready for this for a number of years,” he added. “And they’re kind of at the point now that they’re like, ‘Well, let’s just get on with it.’”
Responding to Putin’s aggression, Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former secretary of the National Security and Defense Council for Ukraine, warned, “We will bury him. I know Ukrainians, and he doesn’t. He has mistaken Ukrainians for many years. We will teach him a lesson.”
The U.S. has provided sparing support to Ukraine in the years since Russia invaded Crimea, wary of lighting a match under the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv. That could now change as Washington’s deterrent threat of sanctions has failed to halt Putin’s attack.
“We still believe … they have every intention of basically decapitating the government and installing their own method governance,” a senior defense official told reporters on Thursday, adding that the Defense Department had “observed missiles being fired from both land and sea based platforms.”
Some believed the U.S. could soon arm Ukrainian insurgents to make the costs of Moscow’s assault increasingly prohibitive.
Andriy P. Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, described what such a response might entail in an op-ed for the Atlantic Council last month.
“Given the right equipment and tactics, Ukraine can dramatically reduce the chances of a successful invasion,” Zagorodnyuk wrote. “By combining serving military units with combat veterans, reservists, territorial defense units, and large numbers of volunteers, Ukraine can create tens of thousands of small and highly mobile groups capable of attacking Russian forces. This will make it virtually impossible for the Kremlin to establish any kind of administration over occupied areas or secure its lines of supply.”
The White House has not said whether Washington is prepared to do this and did not respond to questions on this Thursday.
Simon Miles, assistant professor of public policy at Duke University and an expert in Russia and the former Soviet Union, told reporters on Thursday that the Ukrainian military has been training for large-scale land warfare of the kind now underway.
But Miles said insurgent warfare might prove more challenging.
“You don’t just sort of flip a switch and do unconventional guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. That’s a very, very different skill set,” he said. “There’s a reason why the United States trains a whole segment of the military in that — because it doesn’t come naturally.”
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Fontana, the Western military adviser, said Ukraine is well-prepared given its resources.
“They have done it before. Ukrainians have a long history of resistance to Russian imperialism and communist imperialism,” Fontana said. “They are going to fight.”
