Ukraine’s defenses have already killed 60 infiltrators who mark buildings to direct Russian army bombing
The residents of the Borshchagivka neighborhood, south of Kiev, have a ‘wasap’ group in which they share information. Before the war it was a social network like any other. It was intended to provide useful information to residents in the district. It could serve as much to warn of a traffic accident as to announce the opening of a new bakery. But for three days only one thing has been talked about: the Russian invasion.
Last Thursday, a few hours after the bombing began, a neighbor wrote in this group that from his house he was seeing someone suspicious on the roof of a building. It was the block of flats where Anastasia Tarashchuk and her family live. She and her father went up to the top floor and saw that the door leading to the roof had been forced open. They found no one. But what worried them most was to find out if there was any kind of mark drawn on the roof. The war had just started, but they already knew that it was important to erase those drawings.
Anastasia and her father were not worried about the thieves. They were looking for much more dangerous people. People that different official channels had been alerting about in the last hours: the saboteurs who work to facilitate the attacks of the Russian army on Ukrainian soil.
Saboteurs are people who are not dressed as soldiers, but who facilitate the work of the troops. According to the Government of Ukraine, many of them are infiltrators of the Russian intelligence services. Others are simply Ukrainian citizens who support the invasion. Videos of some of these supposed collaborators are already circulating on social networks. In the middle of the war, with hundreds of deaths in just three days, in the big cities everyone who does something “suspicious” is already distrusted.
One of the things that is known about saboteurs is that they put marks on some buildings and roads. They have also appeared in some parks. They are signs of different colors and shapes. In some houses the targets are drawn right in the area through which the gas pipes pass.
Civilian car shot
These markings are indications for the Russian Army. They can mark buildings where people live that the invading forces feel should be eliminated or areas of interest for future combat. In reality, no one quite knows what many of these marks mean. But they are everywhere. And everyone who comes across one of them quickly erases it or draws something on it.
According to local media, in the last few hours alone some 60 Russian saboteurs have been “killed”. But in these circumstances, at a time when Russian infiltrators are also dressing up in Ukrainian army uniforms to get past checkpoints, everyone looks suspicious. Some of the infiltrators have been caught in action. But mistakes are also made. Two days ago, in an atmosphere of general panic, a civilian car was shot at in the streets of Kiev, mistaken for one of these groups of Russian collaborators.
The reality is that the impact of these groups of people operating in all the big cities of Ukraine is not very well known. Nor can the number of infiltrators be calculated. What is known are some of its consequences. The Kiev City Council has already said that citizens who do not respect the curfew in the city can be considered “enemies” and insists that no one leave their homes for their own safety. What’s more, in some neighborhoods all the signs with the names of the streets and the signs that indicate the directions are already being removed. Those who do know that we are in the age of the internet and GPS. But what they do not want is to make it easy for “the invading troops.”