Is Resistance Working in Ukraine?

Blowing up a railway bridge, destroying an arms depot, disrupting enemy troop movements, means nothing in the operational and strategic picture until you coordinate or coherent with conventional military operations. Where resistance has been quite helpful is that it can affect targets that are unachievable by conventional forces at depth. That's one. You'll see that the resistance elements can provide a demoralizing effect on the enemy that conventional forces just can't do. And no matter what legislation we pass and no matter how much the government is trying to say we're going to be putting our efforts into this resistance architecture, the population and society are not ready to contribute then why would we even put in the effort and the resources. Welcome to episode 141 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Atwell and I'm joined today by guest host Dr. Olga Shiria, the director of the Irregular Warfare Initiative in Europe program. Today's episode explores what the role of resistance operations are in the context of the broader Ukrainian war. To address these questions, our two guests examine whether resistance in occupied Ukraine has been effective. They argue that resistance activities are effective when synchronized with conventional military operations, whereas random acts of resistance are not. The effective user resistance activity faces multiple challenges though. The largest being the need to synchronize not only soft and conventional forces on the battlefield, but also to control resistance entities that are often grassroots and built from the civilian population. Our guests conclude that resistance operations are important, but they play a supporting role in a broader war. Lieutenant General Andy Roling has held multiple senior military roles in Europe to include during the current war in Ukraine. Some of these roles include as Deputy Chair of the NATO Military Committee and Deputy Commanding General of the United States Army Europe. Major John Armstrong is an active duty British officer and author of the article Violent Resistance in occupied Ukraine and assessment of network capabilities, access and utility, which this conversation is based on. He has multiple operational deployments and is a 2025 non-resident fellow at the irregular warfare initiative. You are listening to the Regular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the empirical studies of conflict project at Princeton University and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of regular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Lieutenant General Andy Roling and Major John Armstrong. Andy and John, very excited to have you both as first time guest to the irregular warfare podcast. Thanks, Carl. I'm looking forward to tonight's discussion. I think it'll be quite interesting and very timely considering world events and what's happening in Ukraine. Hey, thanks for having us and thanks for everything that you and the irregular warfare initiative do to push the debate further in regards to unconventional warfare and resistance in general. Thanks. And I'm pleased to say we are also joined by the IWI in Europe director Olga Shirriak, who is going to help me guide a very interesting conversation. Thank you for joining us today, Olga. Thank you for having me, Kyle, and very excited about this podcast and about our two guests very much looking forward to it. So today's conversation is going to focus on a piece of research John published in The Roose Journal titled, violent resistance and occupied Ukraine, an assessment of network capabilities, access and utility. This article takes a deep look at the activities of resistance networks operating in the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine and makes an argument on how resistance in Ukraine and, ostensibly, more broadly should be used to support a country's war aims. I'd like to start by asking you, John, what motivated you to write this article? Well, I think two things. Firstly, the personal one, my grandfather served in the Greek resistance during World War II. So I've always been fascinated by the utility of resistance within conventional operations. But I think more from a professional point of view, I wanted to balance the conversation and the discourse. I think NATO, rightfully, is preparing for a conventional war. And I think that a lot of the discourse is surrounding that preparation. However, I think historically we see when the conventional war starts, you have action, then counteraction. And if there is parity in fighting force that will eventually lead to a pause in the operational tempo. And I think it's then that resistance and unconventional warfare really comes into its own as actors try and look at ways of imposing cost or dilemmas upon their opponents. And so I think as an alliance and the nations contained within it should seek ways and means by which to impose those dilemmas and costs upon our enemies. And could you provide a real quick definition of what you mean when you're talking about resistance? So I use the resistance operating concept definition of resistance. So that is a whole of society approach to resisting the acts of an aggressor during occupation. Andy simply put, does resistance matter in the context of a broader war? How significant a consideration has resistance been from the view of the broader war in Ukraine and do senior leaders consider this significant? My overall view would be that it's not the topic that comes up every single day and it's not the meaty part of many discussions, but yet it's acknowledged that it's ongoing. I think the challenge that we have much like unconventional warfare and other special operations level of missions is there's a niche group that does it day to day and then the larger conventional side of any organization, whether it's a national or an alliance deals with the larger, bigger moving pieces and kind of gets consumed by that while a smaller element is working in this space. To your question though, is it important? It's absolutely important. And I think we're seeing in Ukraine that resistance is making some significant impacts to the overall conduct. And I think there's, you know, conversation to be had is when do you attribute, when you not attribute and other sort of parts of that? But so the answer is yes, hugely important. Sometimes overlooked by your larger conventional forces and larger conventional policy makers. Yeah, I think I completely agree with Andy that. Reluct but also misunderstood completely by conventional planners. I think random acts of resistance do not contribute to operational strategic effect. And so that's really why I wanted to start this debate and have this conversation with you is to really educate our scholars and then our practitioners and really highlight the importance of this and its integration within conventional operational constructs. I love that term random acts of resistance. Well, I think historically you look back to how resistance has been integrated into conventional constructs. And if it is not a conscious effort, it becomes a side show, it becomes a distraction. And my mind casts back to something that field martial slim roads in his war defeats into victory, you know, fighting in the Burma campaign during the Second World War. He said that special forces actually detracted from the overall war effort, consuming a lot more resources for the actual value that they gave. However, the one thing that he did say that he always wanted more of was that unconventional warfare and that resistance behind the enemy lines that he felt he could really integrate into his battle plans to provide that operational and strategic moments of opportunity that could then be seized upon by his conventional forces. So I think that's the nail that we need to keep hitting is how do we integrate right from the start? Yeah, John, I think you touched on the point of integration is some of our challenge. The integration that happens down from the special forces team or the practitioner or the executor of resistance all the way through your multi star headquarters. And so how and where do you integrate on a daily basis and part of the overall operational plan? And frankly, if Afghanistan and Iraq taught us anything, it brought the special and conventional forces together a little bit, but yet we still have the stovepipes that will continue to make this a challenge. And I think as we have separated away from the coalition warfare that we had done in Afghanistan Iraq, we're going to get ourselves back into it's going to be harder to integrate again because the elements that are doing it are stovepiped in their own little headquarters. So how we're going to continue to break that wall that this isn't just a special operation that this is an overall part of a campaign is going to be our challenge. And as we're out of active warfare that we had been in, I think that gap is going to get bigger and we got to work as the next war starts that we're not having to relearn that lesson of breaking stovepipes. Olga, you've done a lot of research on the history of resistance in Europe looking beyond the current case in Ukraine. How relevant is this in broader conflicts historically? I think it's very important, but I wanted to add on to what Andy said earlier in addition to conventional versus unconventional and also going back to John's definition. Another element is society. And we tend in the US and maybe in the broader West to separate society from the military, we have civil oversight. I think from my resistance standpoint, it's very important to understand society because it is society that produces our leaders and the way that they decide things and their decision-making process and whether that's overdo covered in how we plan for warfare that's a very important dimension. And historically speaking about this, I wrote extensively about Russia and the Soviet Union, Russia, Tsarist, Russia, the Soviet Union and Russian Federation today. And the way they have built the resistance concept is very telling as how they integrated society and not only their own society, but the societies and the populace of the specific area they operated in. So that would be the two main points that I would take away. And I think societies are own and are allies, partners and falls. And I'm doing a better job at understanding the relationship between the military and civilians because resistance is a grassroots effort at the end of the day that is born in a society. Yeah, that's a great point. The civilians are a key part of resistance. And that's probably one of the things that makes it a unique challenge from a military planner's perspective. John, part of your research is identifying what activities the resistance has carried out in the occupied territories of Ukraine. I'd like to pivot to understanding what types of activities resistance do carry out at the tactical level. So the Ukrainian theater shows us that the resistance networks in occupied territories are capable of full spectrum resistance activities. On the far left hand side of the spectrum, you've got intelligence gathering and nonviolent resistance. You then see all the way through to the end of the spectrum where you're conducting those sort of classic guerrilla activities like sabotage and improvise explosive attacks and ambushes and raids. So really you see the full spectrum of that activity across the occupied territories. But these are military actors or these actually civilians as Olga was talking about in many cases. Well, that's really hard to tell if I'm honest with you. So because Ukraine did not form pre-established resistance networks prior to invasion or didn't have the time to do so, I would assess that many of these groups are sort of grassroots networks that have established themselves post occupation. And from a research perspective, how do we identify these actions? How do you make a spreadsheet that tracks whether or not they happened when resistance activities are inherently secretive and seek to be plausibly deniable? Yeah, so resistance activities are covert or clandestine. However, the end result should be always visible by e. Kinetic. By looking at reporting that comes out of the occupied territories or even the social media posts that these actors make, you can start to build a picture of the type of resistance activity that is going on. That's the difference between a resistance network and an intelligence network. The intelligence network is inherently there to provide information and they are want to keep the noise down. They don't want to expose themselves because the network for operational security. However, a resistance network and a guerrilla component and the underground component specifically, they are designed to make things go bang. They are having a kinetic effect upon the enemy to disrupt, to delay, to block, to fix, to turn, et cetera, et cetera. Andy, when you're looking at these actions that resistance are conducting in an occupied territory, what are the types of things that the conventional joint force planners and commanders are really like what are the things that bring their attention? I think what most often you'll find is things that a conventional force can't really do the way that your regular resistant element could do. So, it's hard for a conventional force to blow up a railroad junction, several hundred kilometers behind what we would consider the front lines without large, you know, either an longer missile or an aircraft strike or something like that. I think where resistance has been quite helpful is it can affect targets that are unachievable by conventional forces at depth. That's one. I think second, you'll see that the resistance elements can provide a demoralizing effect on the enemy that conventional forces just can't do. The enemy doesn't know, in this case, to Russians don't know who the bad guys are and where they can strike at any given time. I think those are the two major effects and those just can't be done by conventional forces. I mean, conventional can do large scale attacks and they can do stuff and the enemy can be concerned, but not at a level uncertainty that resistance forces can bring. Gandhi alludes to something really important there and actually one of the limitations of resistance networks is the coordination and timing because I go back to my previous point about random acts of resistance. Something up a railway bridge, destroying an arms depot, disrupting enemy troop movements means nothing in the operational and strategic picture until you coordinate or hear with conventional military operations. So for example, during the D-Day operation, you saw the French resistance networks destroying railway junctions, diverting the flow of combat power material up to the Normandy beaches and that enabled or that supported the breakout of the Allied forces. So it's really that coordination piece that is and the timing that is really, really important for a resistance network to be able to achieve. In a perfect world, if I were the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and I took the operational plan, which is the defense and deterrence of the North Atlantic area, the D-Day family of plans, that would be the broad umbrella and then it would subsequently down into the regional plans all the way down and involved in that would be the resistance operations that we would like to see across the spectrum of that family of plans. Then that would get tasked out and at some point in time somebody would coordinate with a small resistance group that we would have trained and formed in name your country and that they would have a task in a sequence of events in time that would support the overall plan. I mean, that's how it's supposed to work and in the books, that's how it's supposed to work. What ends up, the challenge gets to be as a little chicken in the egg because it's sometimes that doesn't always come down and all of a sudden you're finding out about a resistance network and now how do you get that resistance network into your plan because they formed by themselves or they are successful in a way that you didn't expect them to be vice or vice versa. That's where we would like it to be, which would be organized, equipped, trained, manned and in the plan today. I would hope at the end of our podcast everybody that's doing the planning says, yep, that's what we're going to do and we can institute it. That's the challenge. I would like to get us there. Andy, are you saying that our most perfect plans on paper don't always manifest and practice on the ground? I know shocking, isn't it? You said something earlier that really resonated, which is what is the value proposition or resistance and to put it into a broader concept of the theory of what do special operations forces add to the conventional commander. It's really to supplement or substitute where conventional forces can echo. You're really extending the reach of the joint force commander into the deep spite if conventional forces can't get there. That integration is really important, but what John's paper really highlights is there's some challenge when the people that you're integrating into your war plans don't report directly under a traditional military china command into the plan. I think that's the essence of John's paper. No, I completely agree. I think the reality is that no two models are the same. If we finish this podcast, everybody listens to it, of course they would, but then they make some really big changes and they start developing these preformed resistance networks. The reality is that they will be one small component of an overall resistance in an occupied territory. Historically, have always been examples of grassroots resistance networks that form under the pressures of occupation. You know, they are pressed. Their rights are taken away and they get angry about that and they form these grassroots resistance networks to try and fight back. So really it's up for conventional planners to have multiple levers or multiple partners. So you can have your preformed resistance network partners, but they have to be willing. They have to be looking for and willing to integrate grassroots resistance networks where appropriate into conventional planning because maybe those preformed resistance networks don't have the access that Andy's just described. And actually they need to look elsewhere for partners of convenience that can go and provide those effects. Some of these organic groups that arise to resist an occupier or not people, the state would want to partner with in the short term or in the long term. Yeah, I mean, you touched exactly what my comment was going to be. I think historically, if you look at where some resistance activities are, they are elements that the mainstream government didn't want to be part of. If you look at Tito and Yugoslavia back in World War II, a lot of people didn't like Tito. So he was a hugely capable resistance fighter, but he wasn't super popular in many other areas. And I think it goes to why we struggle sometimes to develop our resistance network before conflict for the same reasons. Some governments would not like to have a well-trained militia that works under the radar of their government. I can't imagine Spain would be excited if we got the catalogs all trained up and ready to go in case there was a war in Spain. I think that they'd be great resistance fighters, but currently they'd also resist the current government in Spain at the same time. So I think there's a double-edged sword to pre-training an active resistance network. And I think that's some of the inherent dangers of it. Yeah, completely agree with Andy that. And whilst I always advocate for the pre-formed resistance networks to be developed as part of a campaign approach to dealing with an occupation, actually, as Andy just alluded to there, there's a real political cost to developing resistance networks pre-conflict. Just right off the bat, it's a big statement to make to say, okay, to your general population, okay, we're going to form these networks. Because then the question is, well, are we not safe? Are you, is the government not not fulfilling the first role of government, which is to protect the population and therefore you're having to train up these people because we're in imminent danger? The second thing I just want to draw on is the partners that established themselves as grass roots, resistance networks post-conflict. And generally, historically, those have seen to be, as Andy put it, not very nice people and people that we wouldn't normally want to be associated with, far right, far left, as we would put it extremists, but actually have the network and the access into geographic areas that we would want to have an effect. And therefore they become the partners of convenience rather than a partner of choice. The key is to have a very clear theory of victory and what we want to achieve, who do we fight with and what do we want to achieve where? If we take a little bit of a different perspective and we know where we want to operate and why and with what goal, then it will be a lot easier rather than just going and pursuing groups that we can train in advance. It's very important to have that end goal in mind and to align rather than to try to just prepare social-scape populations for resistance. On you brought up the political sensitivities in preparing for resistance prior to conflict, one of the arguments you make in your piece is that in Ukraine, the preparation for resistance came too late, which hurt its overall effectiveness during the actual campaign. Can you explain this argument a little more and evidence that there is a shortfall and what could have been done differently? Well, after 2014, Ukraine initiated preparations for national resistance through the formation of the territorial defense force as a component of the AFU, but a fact was they started the legislation. It wasn't actually formed as a component until mid-2021. The ratification of resistance legislation was delayed until January 22, and that did not give the territorial defense force time to reach full operating capacity before the Russian invasion in February 2022. Now, that in itself is not a huge problem because I would argue that in the opening stages of conflict, actually the resistance networks probably did not have the opportunity to have operational strategic effect against the Russian invasion. However, when the front lines went static, we saw a resistance net activity starting for a very low baseline in terms of numbers of attacks and general activity, and then a sort of upturn as the war went on into 2022, 2023, 2024, and now obviously to today. So delays in getting the resistance legislation through, the formation of the territorial defense force, and then of course when occupation happened, the steady increase in attacks demonstrated that the Ukrainian resistance network started to gain both the capability and the access to conduct their attacks. To build on that, in addition to legislation, Ukraine was given three days to fight and resist, but obviously it's been a little bit longer than that. So the population, people of society, made up their minds, they wanted to resist anyone that would get in the way of achieving their ultimate goal, which is being part of the European family and being a democratic free society, where people are free to pursue their goals, and they can raise their children in stability. So in addition to the legislation, the reason why I went back to this is because again, we are operating within NATO, we're talking about the future of NATO. I loved the earlier observation, what does NATO mean? Because within NATO there's a lot of member states, and each population might not be as ready as the Ukrainians were to put up this fight. And no matter what legislation we pass, and no matter how much the government is trying to say we're going to be putting our efforts into this resistance architecture, the population and society are not ready to contribute, then why would we even put in the effort and resources? Yeah, I just wanted to add to the point that preparing for resistance is politically sensitive. I think we need to be sympathetic to the fact that in the run up to the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there are lots of efforts to try and reach political solutions that would have stopped that full scale invasion. So it's not a criticism of the Ukrainian government at all, because actually as you ramp up into crisis, it can be quite inflammatory and escalatory to then declare your country is preparing for resistance. And so I guess that is something that we should draw out of this for a strategic learning point that actually started to prepare for resistance, cannot or should not be done in times of crisis. You should be doing it well in advance of that. Yeah, John, to that point out of the 32 member nations of NATO, 16 of the member states have resistance as part of their defense plans. And I would use Finland and maybe Estonia as two of the nations specifically that resistance is an integral part of their national defense planning. It's practiced, it's rehearsed, it's got into their plans at a level that I would say as a United States military officer, if somebody talked about a resistance planning in the United States, the FBI would probably be raiding their little capital, right? So Finland and Estonia specifically, I mean, the government acknowledges that the advantage is there and that that's part of the national plan. So it's not as though, I mean, we've seen where it could have been better in Ukraine, but I also think that people recognize that and are working to get better. It would be nice if all 32 nations had it, but I think some closer to the potential frontlines are doing a lot in that space. This brings up a really good point, which is resistance can be inflammatory. I presume you also want to use it as a deterrence mechanism. You want your opposition or potential invader to know that you have resistance. And at the same time, you do not want them to be looking around for what those networks are because they can dismantle them as soon as they invade. So I guess this leads to a bigger question. If you have an active resistance plan, should you keep it secret or should you be over to it to ensure that it's part of your deterrence plan? I think that they should be over and I'll use Finland as an example. They are. They are catchphrases, a fin behind every tree. So they have been quite straightforward with the Russians. If you invade Finland again, we will be behind a tree with a rifle because we've trained every one of our citizens to fight back. And so I think in that case, they're very straightforward. I think other countries don't want to be as straightforward in that category and for other reasons that's reasonable. So universally, not a straight answer, but in some cases, the closer you are to a potential front line, I think the more you want to be quite obvious that you're prepared for resistance warfare because if you're the other side, you're the invader and you know that you're going to have people behind every tree, it would really affect your force ratios, how you're going to maneuver your forces, where you'll put people in what weapon system. So it's a good deterrent. There's a really interesting point that Andy's just brought up. I would definitely advocate for a mixture of overt and covert resistance networks because you do want resistance to form parts of your deterrent strategy. But I would argue quite strongly that actually resistance alone does not deter invasion. You know, when a country is prepared to absorb horrific costs on its own side and absorb those and continue the fight, then a few bands of very brave men and women hiding behind trees do not in itself deter invasion. Hard power, conventional military power, deters invasion when it is combined with all of the other levers of deterrents. What we are lacking at the moment in some of our alliance states is that integration of resistance capabilities be it directly. So for example, if in Lundestone, you're always Sweden, etc., etc. Or other NATO countries that perhaps aren't approximately quite close to the threat, but are there ready to support those resistance networks? So I think it is a spectrum of capability that deters an invasion, not resistance alone. To support what John just said, it also has a lot to do with the credibility of said vocal messages because when Finland says there's a thin behind every tree, we know that. We all know that and everyone in Moscow knows that, everyone in D.C. knows that, we believe that. But there's many countries in Europe where do we really think that there will be one person putting up a fight or trying to impose costs on the enemy? Will they resist? Historically, some countries have just given up and have not fought. So I guess to support what both Andy and John said, part of it should be overt, but it depends. I think part of including resistance in your national defense plans whilst it does message externally to potential aggressors, we have to consider the whole audiences as well. So for example, the NATO alliance to say that actually we are willing as a country to stand and defend Alliance territory against an aggressive state and we will play our parts and we will absorb casualties and cost in order to provide time for the Alliance to come back and liberate territory. I also think there's an internal messaging there as well to your own population, preparing people, making them more resilient to potential hybrid threats, but also to the threat of invasion and occupation. So I think it's a messaging thing based to our adversary, to our Alliance and also to the nations themselves. Yeah, and since we're continuing to talk about Finland though, part of Adze with Finland behind a fin behind every tree is also a national army and a national joint force that is getting stronger every day in conventional capability. So it is, I think in this case, the good mix. So the message is not only do we have a fin behind every tree, but we're investing in real capability on the conventional side. So you're right, it's not just one. And as we talked earlier and a perfect world thing to be integrated from the top to the bottom, and this is the same case. And going back to maybe internal messaging, this has a lot to do with trust in authorities and trusting government. Again, going back to societies and populations because this is what I focused on as part of your regular warfare, each state will have a different level of trust in their government. Some democracies are older than others. Some economies are stronger than others. The level of strategic communication in one country might be better than another. There's various factors that have to be considered, but internal messaging is indeed very important because it signals, as John said, not just to external messaging, but also to your population. And this has a lot to do with trust in your own government. A lot of interesting points. The psychological impact of resistance is very well received. So earlier in the conversation, there was a discussion of there's something psychologically imposing to the enemy, knowing that there could be a resistance fighter in the building next to you, that they could attack you in your sleep when you think you're safe in your garrison. But you also brought up the fact that the presence of a resistance may motivate the domestic population, both in the occupied territories and non occupied territories to continue fighting, and also the allies to continue supporting because you're showing that we're willing to put up the fight. We just need to help to do it. I'd like to pivot a little bit, John, to talk about the most effective use of resistance in Ukraine based on your research. So you find that 54% of resistance activity in Ukraine occurs in big cities, but you argue that more effort should be directed toward guerrilla components in the country to include investing in special operations forces behind enemy lines. Can you explain a larger cure a little more? So as you've mentioned, 54% of resistance activity that happened between 2022 and the end of 2024, start of 2025, happened in major population centers. I think that what that highlights is that there's a freedom of movement and access that these networks enjoy inside the population centers, and that's absolutely just that's natural. You hide amongst the people. When it comes to advocating for the development of the guerrilla components, which traditionally, if you're reading the rock doctrine, would say they operate in the rural environments against military targets, they are sometimes uniformed, sometimes not. I think I'd just need to be clear, like the days I think of the French McKee in, you know, Normandy hiding out in the woods in the forest, probably gone. I think that surveillance and the ability of our adversaries to have some pretty well-developed countermeasures probably preclude that from being a realistic option. However. So essentially because of technical surveillance of ISR drones, all kinds of... Precisely. It's almost impossible to hide from Soran's ISR drones. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But, you know, the activity does show that these networks do have access into the rural environments. You know, so we can see from the destruction of bridges, railway stock, junction boxes, etc., be they from arson attack or improvised explosive devices, the networks do have access to the rural environment. So what I argue for is that if you look at the major transiting routes of combat power, be that men material, there are opportunities out there for the enemy to be disrupted or degraded as they get to the front. And that's what I advocate for, basically. In terms of Ukrainian soft behind the lines, you know, that's a really difficult one. I don't think there is any of the ends of large scale Ukrainian forces behind the line to occupy territory. However, that is an opportunity. If we are looking at ways of imposing cost upon an occupying force, if we are looking at ways to try and synchronize resistance activity with conventional operations, then it will necessitate some sources on the ground coordination. And I do think that there is a role that soft could play in that. The presence of all kinds of sensors on the battlefield that make it hard to hide from a technological advance invading force definitely seems like what happened to impact. One of the things I've wondered in the past is, is this terrain dependent? So it may be that in open plains or certain terrain, it's hard to hide, but if you're in triple canopy rainforest in Colombia, maybe traditional guerrilla warfare is more relevant. And I'd love your perspective on what the impact of technology is on the ability to conduct guerrilla warfare resistance. Yeah, I think there's two things on that. One is, I think historically, there's a bit of study that says the majority of resistance activity is conducted in areas where there's cover and concealment, whether that's a city or whether that's a forest, and less so in areas that are open, marshy, like some of the parts of Ukraine today. So there's some historical bit of study that says why that might be placed just in a broad spectrum. But I think if we're talking modern warfare, we have to also not just talk about the capabilities of drones and other things we're seeing on the Ukraine battlefield, but think if we were in a European country that has a smart city, think of London, for example, the proliferation of the CCTV network, that's not a military system that can provide surveillance at a level that could really cause problems for resistance network. That's the infrastructure of the occupied country that we would have to imagine at some point an occupier could get access to. So as we help ourselves in today's world by a lot of the CCTV capabilities, we're making future of warfare harder if you're an occupied country. So those are considerations, I think that capitals will have to consider. How do you protect your CCTV network if you're an occupied country? Do you want it to work like it does today or not? I've just picked up on your Universal surveillance point. That is going to make resistance activity extremely difficult, be it in the urban environment or in the rural environment. But I bring it back to my earlier points about coordinating and synchronization of unconventional, irregular warfare with the conventional force. If these people and activities could be synchronized in time and space, could you imagine a situation where joint force, whole of government capabilities, were being brought to bear upon a certain area at a certain time that enabled a piece of resistance activity to take place that then created a window of opportunity for the conventional force to exploit. So for example, I'm talking about a cyber effect. Is it possible that for a short period of time we could have an impact on that Universal surveillance that you've just described in order to enable a series of events that led to a conventional action on the battlefield? If I understood your paper correctly, the fundamental challenge is that there are people within the occupied territory who want to resist. It is difficult to bring them under centralized control and coordinate them with the conventional military plan due to all kinds of factors there. And so the ideal is that you would have resistance fighters doing acts, but they're not random acts of resistance. They're part of a synchronized plan. Could you provide a little more context of what would be some ideal mission profiles that resistance could execute that would actually advance the broader strategic plan? So I go back to historical examples of which there are many. Could you imagine a situation where we understand that a Russian axis was going to be reinforced to reinforce that axis for a concerted thrust into Ukrainian territory. Combat powers need to be breath forward or redeployed from other areas of the front line. Be that additional tanks, artillery, ammunition, and of course battalions and divisions and brigades moving around. Could you imagine a situation where a resistance network was deployed in order to disrupt that at exactly the same time as Ukrainian counteroffensive took place, obviously layered with all these other effects that could be brought to bear? Now of course it's very easy for me to sit there and say, Hey, look, wouldn't this be great? Of course, it would be great, but there are a whole load of difficulties with trying to see that through to the finish. The coordination and synchronization is one of them. But of course it's developing those capabilities amongst a resistance network to allow them to play that part in the first place. Doing that after occupation occurs is incredibly challenging to get those capability into the hands of the resistance networks. So I go back to my original point of we have to have a mix of pre-planned resistance networks in place ready to resist. Also noting the utility of grassroots resistance networks in the operational strategic plan. I'll go keep going back to that. The understanding of the population because we've talked about NATO and I spend enough time within different NATO countries and talk to enough people to realize and not only my fieldwork but the surveys can tell us that there's different levels of openness and readiness to be that key moment, that key resistance event, no matter what resources we have available. Something that Russia has done very well, they're not on the same level in many aspects with the U.S. or with NATO and yet they initiated a war against the sovereignty of Ukraine, but also a war for the European security architecture, which is always the bigger goal that we don't always talk about in our conversations about Ukraine. Olga, if I can pick up on that and a little bit of where John was at and no conversation today would be complete if he didn't bring AI into the battle somewhere, right? So how do we use today's advancements in artificial intelligence and data integration and synchronization to take the parts and pieces of today's society that are there in the open source, how people are feeling, where their trends are, what's hot on Twitter or X or name it together that you understand some of the societal issues, combine it with your operational impacts that John's talking about, bring those two together and integrate them into a plan that a resistance plays its role in a level that we haven't had the capability yet to integrate that level of data, that level of input. And I think we're seeing it with some of the things that are going on in Ukraine today, some of the things that people are helping Ukraine do, bring all that together. It's only going to get better into the future. It's just a matter of then getting your, as a conventional guy, I hate to put this on myself, but your conventional level senior leaders to integrate all that and not letting the small elements work away on their own side that it's an overall whole of government and a whole of societal plan to get there. So I think we have the tools now, it's a matter of bringing it all together. The interesting thing about the sensors and advanced technology helping the intervening forces that for every time it helps them, it also helps other actors, including resistance forces, operate as well. So it's cat and mouse game. I'd like to pivot before we go to our final question. Andy, militaries have a lot of priorities and limited resources. Should states really place this above other investments, such as building a European drone wall, training and equipping conventional forces? But where's the line where you determine this is a priority or not a priority when you're talking about before an invasion preparing for resistance? Yeah, that's always going to be a tough one because you're always going to be fighting for the euro or the dollar or name your currency to where the resources is going to go. The challenge, the answer is yes, that it should be high. The question, the answer is, will it be probably not what many would like it to be? And it's going to be, it's going to continue to be hard to compete against the investment in hard power, i.e. tanks, planes, rounds, because those are real, substantial, substantive items. And technically, it's hard sometimes to sell the idea of what resistance can do when somebody's looking at a tank or looking at a plane. So to your question, should we, yes, are we going to, I suspect, not at the level that many would like to? Yeah, I completely agree with Andy that I definitely do not think that resistance networks and unconventional warfare capabilities are a substitute for military hard power. I think the practitioners need to acknowledge that they will always play a supporting role for the larger scale operational or strategic planning. I think the good news is these capabilities are relatively cheap. What is difficult is getting the legislation through to prepare the legislative groundwork, the lead all frameworks in order to allow countries to develop either the networks themselves or the capabilities that will support them. I think that one of the other difficulties is that it takes time. So again, I go back to it, you can't develop this in crisis. It goes back to the soft truths. Soft units cannot be created at the time of crisis or war. And the same goes for resistance networks. They are cheap, but they take time to develop and they are expensive in terms of legislative and legal bandwidth prior to the invasion. So I think that's key limiting factor there. Yeah, that's an interesting point. So it's an economy of forced thing as far as actual money spent. It's not just the policy hurdles, which are significant for reasons we've already discussed, but also there's probably a lot of risk hurdles there when you're talking about assuming risk to be able to support forces and occupy territory. Unfortunately, we're running short of time. Before I let you go, I want to close by asking what the implications of this conversation are for practitioners and policymakers from the tactical to the strategic levels. I'll start with John. What are the implications of your research? For policymakers, I think it's an acknowledgement of the utility of these forces when appropriately developed and employed, but it takes time and legislative bandwidth, legal frameworks, in order to develop them. The operational level for the conventional force, it's the education piece. We need to educate our conventional military officers and civilians that work in defence about how these networks and capabilities can play supporting role in overall operational and conventional planning. For the actual practitioners, the unconventional warfare practitioners, I think it's the need to continue to hone the structures. I think it's acknowledging that no two theatres are always the same, and so there is no one template, and so we need to continually be adapting. And heaven forbid, we're ever called in Western Europe and on the eastern flank to put these into practice. Can't just cookie cutter take that one mould and apply it to a different situation? It will always evolve, and then finally, as I've said many, many times before, across the spectrum, it is understanding that these are a supporting elements to the conventional force. Random acts of resistance do not lead to material change on the battlefield, the land domain, where ultimately, invasion will be repelled. And you make the argument in your paper that the fact that resistance still exists three years after Russia's invasion is a testament to trade craft and security measures, I'm guessing there's a bunch of tactical lessons we can take there just on how to operate in denied territory. Yeah, absolutely, but I think those lessons are hard one. There are a lot of brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the face of some pretty horrific oppression, and I think that it is learned through hard trial and error. I think there are probably lessons that we can draw from the trade craft and the TTPs or the tactics, techniques and procedures, but I wouldn't want to draw too many conclusions because at the end of the day, the situation will change in the next theatre. The capabilities that the enemy brings to bear will be different and will have to come up with new methods and ways of defeating those systems in order to have those resistance effects. Olga, same question to you. What are the implications for practitioners and policymakers? I'd also like to know you've been looking at resistance as a scholar for, I believe, a decade now. What do you think the next steps in scholarship are to help inform practitioners and policymakers about the role of resistance and conflict? I would like to point out the difference between information, data and knowledge. I think it's important for us to always remember that we get a lot of information, a lot of data from our interitory research and our experiences, but the filters, the one that will make the difference. We have to understand the context. We need to have a theory of victory and know what we want when we operate globally. A two, the filter, to understand that the context matters regionally and even within a region, we take your example. It's a continent. There's a lot of countries. Each country has different cultures, subcultures. That's why the ultimate goal is so important for us because otherwise we waste time and resources. And third is the information versus data versus knowledge. Just knowing something doesn't mean we understand it. Maybe again, underline the importance of social and behavioral sciences because perception versus perspective, right? We want to understand why, where, and how we reach our goal. And Andy, I'll let you close this out on implications for practitioners and policymakers. Yeah, I think the implication is, as John pointed out that resistance alone won't win the war. It's about the synchronization integration. Then at the NATO level, it's about authorities that we would give the operational and strategic commander. So right now, most of these authorities are national authorities. They've not given that to an overall conventional commander. So the Sacure does not have the ability to task individual national resistance movements because no nation wants to give that up. So if we accept that the resistance plays a role, we accept that it has to be integrated. Well, then we have to take enough risk in ourselves to give the authority to a unified commander to make it effective. Otherwise, it'll be as John pointed out, just random acts of resistance. He's correct that that's not going to win the war. Unfortunately, we're out of time for today, but this has been an incredibly interesting conversation. Andy, John, and Olga, thank you for joining us today on the Irregular Warfare podcast. Thanks for having me today. It's been a wonderful conversation, and I look forward to all the work you're continuing to do. Thank you, Kyle, and thank you, Andy and John. I really enjoyed the conversation, and I will use this opportunity to shamelessly plug Irregular Warfare Initiative and Irregular War Initiative. All of our focus areas, so thank you. Once again for listening to Episode 141 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. If you enjoyed today's topic in particular for our interested in learning more about the role of Irregular Warfare in Europe, please check out the IWI in Europe program. We are a team of volunteer practitioners and researchers focused on building a community of interest on European security issues. We can find more information at www.irregularwarfare.org slash Europe. Again, that is www.irregularwarfare.org slash Europe. Please be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast that you do not miss an episode. You can also engage with us on X, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this discussion, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts. One last thing, what you heard in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of West Point, Princeton, or any other agency of the US or any other government. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.