Women speak out from occupied territories

“Russians are trying to ban everything Ukrainian here: language, and also traditions. Even Ukrainian holidays are forbidden.”

This is the sorrow and fear of a rarely heard voice from within Ukraine – that of someone living in one of the Russian-occupied areas of the country. We are calling her Maria.

As the US leads efforts to negotiate peace in Ukraine, those living under Russian occupation face a brutal, repressive future.

Already, the Kremlin has put in place severe restrictions designed to stamp out Ukrainian identity, including harsh punishments for anyone who dares to disagree.

Now, there are fears that Kyiv could be forced to give up at least some of the territory occupied by Russia as part of a potential ceasefire or peace deal.

Ukrainian officials reject this, but Moscow says that at the very least it wants to fully capture four Ukrainian regions it partly controls – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Due to repression by the Russian authorities, speaking to the media and even your own relatives in occupied territories can be fraught with danger.

The Kremlin has also launched a wide-ranging campaign to force Ukrainians in occupied territories to take Russian passports. Evidence suggests that Ukrainians are being denied healthcare and free movement unless they take up Russian citizenship.

Maria (not her real name) said she was a member of an all-female underground resistance group waging a campaign of peaceful resistance in those territories, mainly by distributing leaflets and newsletters.

In an interview with the BBC’s Today programme, she used a Ukrainian proverb to describe the danger she is facing: “You have fear in your eyes, but your hands are still doing it. Of course it’s scary.”

The BBC cannot reveal her real name or location so as not to put her in danger.

The atmosphere of fear and suspicion is such that when I was trying to contact residents of occupied Mariupol, I was accused of being a Russian journalist.

“You won’t like what I’ve got to say. People like you kill if you tell them the truth,” one person told me via direct message on social media. They claimed to be from the port city, captured by the Russians in May 2022 after a bloody siege that left it in ruins.

Later, I asked some Ukrainian friends if I could speak to their relatives living in occupied areas. All said no – that would be too dangerous.

Sofia (also not her real name) is from a village in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region. It was occupied on day five of the full-scale invasion of 2022, and it is an hour’s drive south of Zaporizhzhia city, a major regional centre still under Ukrainian control.

Sofia is now in the UK but her parents are still in her village and she told me about the care she needs to take when talking to them.

“About a year ago, my parents were searched by the [Russian security service] FSB. They confiscated their phones, accusing them of telling the Ukrainian army about where Russian troops were stationed. That wasn’t true, and later the Russian military told my parents that they had been reported by their neighbours. That’s why I try not to provoke anything like that,” Sofia tells me.

“I have to read between the lines when they tell me about what’s going on.”

And just speaking to them at all is becoming more difficult. Sofia says that her parents are unable even to top up their mobile phones or insure their car because they refuse to take Russian passports.

“It’s getting really awkward living without Russian IDs,” she says.

Yeva, whose name we have also changed, has a sister working at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station.

“Whenever we move from the weather or our children on to our subjects, her tone changes,” Yeva says. “She tells me: ‘You don’t understand!'”

“What I do understand is that being a nuclear power plant worker, her phone is likely to be bugged,” Yeva tells me. She also says that her sister often repeats pro-Russian narratives when speaking to her.

Another friend, Kateryna, tells me that someone she knows in the occupied part of Kherson region was thrown into a punishment cellar for talking to her brother who had been helping the Ukrainian army. “I can’t put them at risk,” Kateryna told me when I asked to be put in touch with her friend.

According to Maria, Russian administrations have been installing surveillance systems to monitor any manifestations of dissent. “They are putting up a lot of CCTV cameras to control everybody, to find all the activists,” she says.

Numerous Ukrainian activists have been killed or disappeared under Russian occupation. According to the Ukrainian rights group Zmina, at least 121 activists, volunteers and journalists have been killed during the full-scale invasion, most of them during its first year.

Prior to the invasion, Russia had drawn up lists of activists to be arrested or killed, the group says.

More recently, Russia-installed authorities have been applying a host of repressive laws against dissenters. They can be penalised for alleged transgressions such as spreading “false information”, “discrediting” the Russian army or supporting “extremism”.

In Crimea alone, 1,279 cases have been launched so far on charges of “discrediting” the Russian armed forces, says the Ukrainian government office for Crimea. According to it, 224 people have been jailed in the occupied Ukrainian region for expressing dissent, most of them members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar community.

Despite the dangers, a number of underground resistance groups are active in occupied parts of Ukraine.

Zla Mavka, which takes its name from a Ukrainian mythical creature, is a non-violent all-female movement mostly focused on distributing posters and leaflets across occupied regions.

In Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia region, partisans have been targeting occupation troops and their transport while the Crimean Tatar group Atesh has been involved in reconnaissance and subversion.

Meanwhile, the Yellow Ribbon movement distributes Ukrainian symbols in occupied territories.

Because of the absence of independent media in occupied parts of Ukraine, it is hard to verify the impact of such activities. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that they have caused significant disruption for occupation forces.

Maria says whole streets are lined with Russian propaganda.

“In city centres, everything is covered with Russian propaganda: billboards with Putin’s face, Putin’s quotes, people they call heroes of the special military operation. There are flags everywhere,” she tells the BBC.

The Kremlin has banned Ukrainian and independent media including the BBC, and propagandists have been despatched from Russia to set up friendly media in the occupied territories. After many professional journalists fled, they have been forced to employ local teenagers to spread Moscow’s narratives.

Pro-Russian propaganda starts early at school, where children are forced to attend classes glorifying the Russian army and join quasi-military groups such as Yunarmia (Youth Army).

One Russian schoolbook even justifies the invasion of Ukraine by falsely portraying it as an aggressive state run by nationalist extremists and manipulated by the West.