○On March 8, 2023, International Women's Day, Russian soldiers hand out tulips and mimosa branches to women and girls in the city of Melitopol in southern Ukraine. This was an action aimed at promoting friendly relations between the occupiers and the population.
However, the night before, someone had secretly pasted posters on the walls and streetlights. They depicted a young Ukrainian woman wearing a traditional embroidered shirt clattering a bouquet of flowers onto the heads of Russian soldiers. The slogan “I don't need flowers” was written on it. “I want Ukraine.”
It was one of the early acts of a women's resistance movement in Russian-occupied Ukraine that includes hundreds of members from Crimea in the south to the Luhansk region in the east.
This movement is called Zura Mavka, which roughly translates to “evil forest spirit.” of Mabuki Women in Ukrainian mythology are supernatural beings who tempt men to destruction.
Using the diagram, mavka This is a double joke. It's a reference to a popular drama by Lesha Ukrainka, an early 20th century Ukrainian feminist. This is a play on the fact that Ukrainians often refer to the Russian military as “orcs,” the savage fighters from J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings. “No match for orcs” mavka” reads one of the movement's posters.
Women in this network carry out small-scale acts of sabotage and resistance, such as disseminating Ukrainian news sheets. Burn Russian propaganda. Dropping fake Russian ruble banknotes on the street.
“We will anger the occupiers, give them headaches and make them forget that they are the occupiers here,” one of the movement's founders said on a messaging app from Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. He spoke in an interview through.
When a curious passerby picks up Zula Mavka's fake 2,000 ruble banknote, it does not show, as expected, a picture of the Russky Bridge connecting Vladivostok with Russky Island in Russia's far east, but instead shows Russia and Crimea. You will notice that there is a picture of the Crimean Bridge connecting it. The moment it was attacked by a Ukrainian bomb in October 2022.
The authentic 200 ruble banknote with a Crimea theme was issued by the Bank of Russia in 2017, three years after Russia's illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and it features the ruins of Chersonesos near Sevastopol and the depicts monuments from the early 20th century. To the sunken ship in Sevastopol Bay.
However, in the fake version of Zura Mavka, the Ukrainian flag can be seen flying inside the classical ruins. When turned over, the Russian battleship Moscow sinks into the Black Sea. The cruiser sank in April 2022, and Ukraine announced it had targeted it with a missile.
The women shared photos of acts of resistance and descriptions of their daily lives under occupation. Zura Mavka Telegram app channels. We are anonymous even to each other to keep each other safe.
The Guardian has not been able to independently verify the veracity of the accounts published on this channel, but they bear the characteristics of separate accounts of life under Russian occupation. Some images display recognizable landmarks in the background.
Rumors of the movement's activities are slowly spreading in free Ukraine. Zura Mavka was featured in a traveling exhibition, invisible powerKiev, Lviv, and, until January 5, Dnipropetrovsk, emphasized nonviolent resistance to Russian aggression. It will open in Odessa in February.
Women often use black humor. “There are two sides to this,” said the co-founder, who preferred to be known only as Mavka for security reasons. “First of all, we need this humor ourselves, because without it we just go crazy here. And on the other hand, we really infuriate the Russian occupiers. ”
Spreading pro-Ukrainian information under occupation is dangerous, and it is becoming more so as time passes. The proliferation of surveillance cameras in Russian-occupied cities makes putting up posters especially dangerous.
“Of course we are afraid,” Mafka said. “Everyone is well aware of the risks and understands what could threaten them if they become infected. We are taking extreme caution and reminding all activists about all the rules. I try to warn you, every woman knows what she's doing and everyone makes their own choices.”
Early posters for spring 2023 feature a distinctive character: a smiling girl with long hair wearing a traditional Ukrainian wreath, accompanied by various slogans such as “Keep Russia's garbage out” It was getting worse. Activities in recent months have included fixing a simple Zula Mavka symbol, a triangle with a sunbeam surmounted, on the wall of an apartment lobby.
“I first wanted to keep it simple so that it would be easy to draw even in difficult situations,” Mafuka said of the symbol. “It had to be in the form of a woman, so we added the sun to ensure that it rises over Ukraine when Russia loses.”
Women first contact the movement by writing a letter to the chatbot. The material is posted on the public Telegram channel only after it has been checked for authenticity wherever possible and information that may violate the identity of the woman has been filtered out. The diary published on the Telegram channel is accompanied by drawings provided by supporters of the Free Ukraine movement.
Records of daily life submitted by women have been revealed. A woman living in Yalta, Crimea, posted in October this year about preparing to rent an apartment. “We can't afford to take any risks. Books in Ukrainian, books about Ukrainian art, history textbooks in English, foreign magazines about feminist and queer art – all these things need to be put away before strangers enter the house. Yes,” she wrote.
It is difficult to assess the degree of resistance in the occupied territories. As diary entries demonstrate, schools are now implementing a Russian curriculum, and many families from Russia have immigrated to the occupied territories. One diary notes that the letter “Z”, Russia's symbol for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, was spread on public transport, cars and buildings.
The diary deals with difficult subjects, such as the recruitment of Ukrainian men into the Russian army. “Girls, I am writing to you in tears,” a woman living in the occupied Zaporizhzhya region wrote in February this year. “They took my son. I told him I was going to serve in the military, but it turned out that either the Ukrainians or the Russians would treat him like a traitor.
“My conscience punished me severely,” she added. And I thought I was too old to go anywhere. And he was with me. And now I'm crying and don't know what to do. ”
One supporter of the movement from Free Ukraine, who asked to be identified only by her first name Olha for security reasons, said: That's why women also started participating. It is not just a movement of resistance, but increasingly a community of women.
“It's not a special mission, it's not military. It's women to women, women under occupation to women under occupation.”
