In an interview in the middle of the night from the floor of an empty office in Kyiv, the base camp for his group of some 50 civilians and retired military, wearing fatigues with weapons at the ready, Alexander Nosachenko tells PEOPLE he believes there is a good reason the Russians haven’t been able to capture Ukraine’s capital.
He credited not only the Ukrainian military but approximately half a million civilian men who are determined to defend it — including himself, a prominent businessman-turned-resistance fighter.
“All of them are prepared to die,” Nosachenko says. “I’m sure of that.”
It’s a surprisingly resilient fighting force, outside observers say: A month into their invasion and the larger Russian military has been stalled across Ukraine, whose government still stands.
He says the group is made up of professionals, former military, retirees. “All of them are civilians,” he says. Nosachenko began training in firearms about six years ago, amid a previous period of political unrest in his country, he says.
“I wanted to master this just for the [sake] of knowing that in case a D-Day comes then you’re prepared,” he says. “No matter how weird it sounds, this day came.” And they were ready.
“Civilians are probably making most of the progress now,” he says. When they see opposing tanks or armored vehicles, they message on their cell phones to channels within Ukraine’s artillery, sending photos, videos and geographic coordinates.
There is some verification and then, within minutes, “the bombs are there,” Nosachenko says.
“This is the reason why so many Russian columns of armored vehicles, tanks were just destroyed,” he says. They’ve already struck some 1,300 targets. (He doesn’t think the Russians will take down the internet, which would foil the system, because they rely on it now as well, he says.)
Ukrainian civilian volunteers and reservists of the Kyiv Territorial Defense unit conduct weekly combat training in an abandoned asphalt factory on the outskirts of the capital.Sipa via AP Images
For the moment, the capital city seems indomitable. That is a powerful asset for Ukraine’s leaders in the parallel public relations battle both sides are waging on the international stage. The Ukrainian president,Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has refused to flee.
“Once Russians come to Kyiv, they are immediately killed,” Nosachenko says. “There are no Russian soldiers in Kyiv. They cannot penetrate — all of those who are trying to come to Kyiv, they are immediately destroyed.”
“With a Molotov cocktail or just a rifle, they’ll just show up and shoot,” Nosachenko says. “So that’s pretty simple.”
He continues: “[Russia] thought a picture of a tank approaching Kyiv will make all the civilians and the government escape and the job is done. They thought they would invade the entire Ukraine in a matter of three days — two days for Kyiv.”
Nosachenko says that Russian forces tried other tactics, too: Some may have been living in Kyiv for six months before the invasion, assembling clothes and weapons. But even a guerilla-style strategy never meaningfully took root.
“They realized that on every roof there is a sniper,” Nosachenko says. “You can do nothing. The whole city of men are with firearms. How can you invade that city? It’s impossible.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (back) awards fighters who protect Ukrainians and maintain law and order amid the Russian invasion.Alamy Stock Photo
Alexander Nosachenko.Courtesy Alexander Nosachenko
Kyiv, Nosachenko says, is increasingly protected against the mounting threat — as Russian forces have reportedly continued to press a campaign to encircle the city.
A traditional air and land invasion has been unsuccessful, to date, and Nosachenko expects the Russian military to increasingly bombard the city from afar in what he says is an attempt to kill all civilians.
“If you don’t have support from civilians, the rules of war [for the invader] are very simple: Don’t get within the city limit. Otherwise, no matter how good the army is, you will be killed,” Nosachenko says. “Ultimately you can kill all civilians, and this is exactly what Russian troops are trying to do now.”
Nosachenko says he is one of many civilian men in the country who have been training a few days a week in weapons. His own interest in armed resistance dates back to when mass demonstrations ousted the Russian-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 and Russia subsequently seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and backed separatists in the Donbas region.
“Five hundred meters from my office people were killed, and I was just going to the office,” Nosachenko says.
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For the last six years, Nosachenko says, he has been leaving the office at lunchtime and spending time on the weekends to train privately with a retired special forces sniper. He bought his own rifles and kept them in a safe in his house.
“Many men who never touched firearms in the past but started to heavily train from 2015 or 2016. I’m just a civilian, I had never been to military service, never been at any war, but I’m a properly trained person,” he says. His specialty is in assault and sniper rifles.
“Did I know that I will need it one day? No. I thought it’s better to be prepared, that was just the idea,” he says now.
He was on vacation with his family in Cannes, France, in December when Russia’s threats and military maneuvers escalated. In early January, he figured it was time to go home. He left his wife, son and daughter back in France.
Alexander Nosachenko (second from right) with his family.Courtesy Alexander Nosachenko
“It’s not about the city, it’s about people who are living here,” he says. “I have the means to run to Europe and to enjoy life there, but there are so many people, like my neighbors, my relatives, even distant relatives — they will all die here.”
He says he recently had a conversation with the commander of his unofficial group of veterans and civilians: “I said, ‘I’m staying no matter what.’ I’ve arranged all things in case I’m no longer with my family, they will live somehow. I have enough savings for them to have not the best life but the good life — the kids will get proper education, my wife will not be poor.”
Nosachenko’s commander was taken aback. “He said,' You are talking to me as if you are going to be 100 percent dead.' He told me, ‘We are not staying here to die. We are staying here to live.’ "
Ukraine’s recent history of unrest against political corruption and reports of election fraud as well as the drift toward the rest of Europe — the very thing that has so displeased Russia’s leaders — helped galvanize their citizens, too, Nosachenko says.
He notes that many Ukrainians have been able to travel to other parts of Europe without a visa.
“There is no other man in the world who made Ukrainians hate Russians so badly as [Vladimir] Putin,” he says, referring to Russia’s autocratic president. “I think his idea was to capture Ukraine, … but what he did was the opposite. There is just no way back.”
Nosachenko dismisses rumors — fomented on social media and among certain Russian state media outlets — that it is Ukrainians who are actually blowing up their own buildings to create international sympathy.
He says that in the initial weeks of the invasion, the Russian forces have lost more than 12,000 troops — a staggering toll, if true, though casualties are hard to verify and the Kremlin is loath to confirm its losses.
That, too, heartens Nosachenko. “This will be recorded in the books of history as one of the biggest mistakes of military campaigns, no matter how it ends, no matter that they finally may just destroy Kyiv completely,” he says. “It doesn’t matter for us, because sooner or later we’ll come back.”
Because so many civilians are being killed in the invasion — Nosachenkocalls it a genocide— Ukrainians may have lost their appetite for a Russian-leaning compromise, perhaps including part of the two separatist regions in the east and 50 years of concessions for Crimea.
Nosachenko describes a mood of national defiance in the face of the conflict’s very uncertain future.
“There is no way back,” he says. “[Putin] would have to kill all Ukrainians to conquer this country.”
source: people.com
