section_path: Battlespaces/Ukrainian resistance
section_name: Ukrainian resistance
paragraph_text: Ukrainian resistance
  
  Ukrainian civilians resisted the Russian invasion by volunteering for territorial defence units, making Molotov cocktails, donating food, building barriers like Czech hedgehogs, and helping to transport refugees. Responding to a call from Ukravtodor, Ukraine's transportation agency, civilians dismantled or altered road signs, constructed makeshift barriers, and blocked roadways. Social media reports showed spontaneous street protests against Russian forces in occupied settlements, often evolving into verbal altercations and physical standoffs with Russian troops. By the beginning of April, Ukrainian civilians began to organise as guerrillas, mostly in the wooded north and east of the country. The Ukrainian military announced plans for a large-scale guerrilla campaign to complement its conventional defence.
  
  People physically blocked Russian military vehicles, sometimes forcing them to retreat. The Russian soldiers' response to unarmed civilian resistance varied from reluctance to engage the protesters, to firing into the air, to firing directly into crowds. There have been mass detentions of Ukrainian protesters, and Ukrainian media has reported forced disappearances, mock executions, hostage-taking, extrajudicial killings, and sexual violence perpetrated by the Russian military. To facilitate Ukrainian attacks, civilians reported Russian military positions via a Telegram chatbot and Diia, a Ukrainian government app previously used by citizens to upload official identity and medical documents. In response, Russian forces began destroying mobile phone network equipment, searching door-to-door for smartphones and computers, and in at least one case killed a civilian who had pictures of Russian tanks.
  
  As of 21 May 2022, Zelenskyy indicated that Ukraine had 700,000 service members on active duty fighting the Russian invasion. Ukraine withdrew soldiers and military equipment back to Ukraine over the course of 2022 that had been deployed to United Nations peacekeeping missions like MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.