When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, they thought it would be a short war. Ukraine fought back fiercely, refusing to surrender their homeland. The smaller country had to think outside the box to defend against a never-ending supply of soldiers from Russia and its allies. One piece of that strategy is the Ukrainians caught inside Russian-occupied territory who risk their lives to send intelligence out to the Ukraine military.
Many of these operatives are women, sometimes called vidma. The word translates to "witch," but in Ukrainian it carries the connotation of wisdom. Thousands of them have been training to defend their country since the seizure of Crimea in 2014. Those caught in occupied territory harness the Russians' view of them as harmless because of their age or gender. Russia disabled Ukrainian phones and replaced them with devices filled with surveillance apps, but they've learned to work around that. One of the schemes they use to smuggle intelligence out involves catfishing. Innocently flirt with a lonely Russian soldier just enough to solicit a picture, and the metadata from it can help a Ukrainian drone target his base for a bomb attack, even if it's deep inside Russia. Read about the modern tactics of the Ukrainian resistance in an article from The Atlantic. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Iktsokh)
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