After delicate negotiations, I met with “Dzhokhar” online. We talked about Atesh and its clandestine operations throughout occupied Ukraine and deep inside Russia.
I didn’t see his face and only knew he was 28 years old, from the Kherson region, and helped coordinate covert work in occupied Crimea and the movement’s media relations. The identity of agents is a closely guarded secret, Dzhokhar is the name he asked me to use.
Created in the summer of 2022, the movement’s operatives have played pivotal roles in some of the most high-profile Ukrainian successes of the war, including the destruction of Russian ships, aircraft, and senior officers.
“A group of pro-Ukrainian activists in Crimea, including Crimean Tatars, had the idea of creating the movement,” Dzhokhar said. “The war was dragging on, Russia was completely unable to achieve its goals, and it was clear mobilization would be announced.”
The enforced enlistment of people from Crimea into Moscow’s forces gave the nascent resistance movement a major opportunity, which it seized.
“From the beginning of mobilization, from the fall of 2022, the first agents of Atesh were mobilized into the Russian army,” Dzhokhar said. “Some of them joined independently, some of them were drafted. From that moment on the movement increased.”
There are now about 1,800 informants, agents and activists working for Atesh. They include a civil force, made up of people not ready to carry out direct action, alongside agents who engage in more radical and risky tasks, such as sabotage and operating inside enemy forces and organizations.
There are as many motivations for joining Atesh as there are members, Dzhokhar said, but they all share a desire to drive Russia out of Ukraine.
“Sometimes they are employees of law enforcement agencies, sometimes they are ordinary people who have found the strength to fight Russia,” Dzhokhar said. He recalled listening to the “very emotional” story of a volunteer whose soldier father had been killed in the war. “It was clear why this person was determined to fight the occupation,” he said.
Assignments for agents and activists include collecting information and observing strategic activity. Atesh posted images on Telegram of a ship repair facility for the Black Sea Fleet, for example, showing the occupying authorities they knew the purpose of the building and that it was in its sights.
Agents also spy in Russia and provide information about defense installations and enterprises. This company in Moscow Oblast designs and produces missiles.
Atesh has agents in cities and regions across Russia and is actively recruiting more. Posters with the invitation to “become our eyes, join the movement Atesh,” appeared on telegraph poles in Siberia, according to a post on the movement’s official Telegram channel.
By developing a cell in Siberia “we not only demonstrate our presence in the region but show people who are against the regime they are not alone and we are ready to fight with them,” the post said.
Atesh’s intelligence has played a crucial role in significant Ukrainian operations against the Russian fleet in Crimea, Dzhokhar said. These include successful strikes on the landing ship Minsk and the submarine Rostov-on-Don, as well as an attack on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet.
“Our people – activists, and people in the headquarters itself – recorded all the ships in Sevastopol Bay, which of them were under repair, which were on training, their training schedules,” Dzhokhar told CEPA. “Thanks to our information, the defense forces were able to strike.”
Another operation, which took place in April 2023 in the village of Velyki Kopani, Kherson region, illustrated the effectiveness of small groups and individual partisans secretly operating behind enemy lines, he said.
Russian soldiers moved to the village and “our operative successfully gained their trust, sold them narcotics, and, during the night, stole their weapons, resulting in the neutralization of two soldiers,” Dzhokhar said. “Remarkably, this individual, an ordinary person, executed the operation independently.”
Atesh has also sabotaged railways in occupied Ukraine and Russia, blown up checkpoints and trucks, and bombed the headquarters of the United Russia party in occupied Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast, during September’s sham elections.
Russian forces are constantly looking for partisans and, while all operatives receive detailed guidance on safety, communication methods, and avoiding detection, there is no guarantee of safety. Atesh agents behind enemy lines have been discovered and detained, Dzhokhar said.
There have also been double agents, a common threat for partisan operations. While coordinators continually screen individuals attempting to join, the movement knows such cases are inevitable.
“Recently we discovered three Russian special services agents among our ranks,” Dzhokhar said. “Our coordinators realized they didn’t want to work for us so much as to discover our structure, our agents in Crimea. Such attempts are constant.”
The movement has its eyes on expansion and wants to recruit as many agents as possible, covering not only the occupied Ukrainian territories but also the Russian Federation, he said.
“We help with logistics, if some weapons or explosives are needed we provide them,” he said. “When we recruit new agents, we start them with simple tasks, then when they complete them, we raise the level. As confidence grows, they are assigned more complex operations.”
Elina Beketova is a Democracy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), focusing on the occupied territories of Ukraine. She worked as a journalist, editor, and TV anchor for various news stations in Kharkiv and Kyiv, and currently contributes to the translator’s team of Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine’s biggest online newspaper.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
