Handbook

Окупація означає, що країна або її частина була захоплена збройними силами іншої країни. Під час окупації територія держави перебуває під контролем ворога, а її представники прагнуть утвердитися як офіційна влада. Вони намагаються завоювати підтримку та довіру місцевого населення і тримати його в незнанні.

Окупація зазвичай супроводжується інтенсивною пропагандою, підбуренням до зрадницьких вчинків та насильства щодо співвітчизників, широкими репресіями проти мирного населення та зростанням злочинності.

Україна стійко боронить свою землю, яким би непереборним не здавався суперник. І дає бій окупантам по всій лінії фронту. Навіть якщо держава тимчасово втрачає контроль над частиною своєї території, громадяни України чинять на цій території організований опір.

Будьте готові справлятись самостійно протягом тривалого часу в разі перебоїв у наданні життєво важливих послуг або зниженні доступності товарів. За можливості запасіться водою, їжею та іншими необхідними речами.

Далі надаємо перелік порад, які допоможуть вам організувати собі відносну безпеку та бути готовими до потенційних загроз чи провокацій.

Even if your city or village is in the occupied territory, every citizen can contribute to the resistance – both as a part of the underground partisan forces, and as an auxiliary component. Simple, and most importantly, safe actions, multiplied by thousands of citizens who carry them out, turn into a powerful weapon and a tangible obstacle to the work of the occupiers.

The Special Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have developed a practical guide on how to resist the occupiers, which can be downloaded from the link.

More recommendations are available on the website of the Center of National Resistance.

Ukraine and international humanitarian organizations will help them cope in various ways.

Television

Ukrainian TV channels can be found on an open satellite using a satellite receiver or a TV set with a built-in receiver. Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainian television has been decoded on satellite.

Currently, most Ukrainian channels are available on Astra 4A (4.8°E) (mainly at 11766 H, 12130 V and 12437 V) and Amos 3 (4.0°W) (main frequencies 11140 H, 11175 H).

Internet (mobile and stationary)

If your Internet provider is connected to the Russian network, always use VPN services on your phone and computer. They help you avoid surveillance and bypass restrictions imposed by the occupiers. Many of these services are blocked by Russia, so you should look for VPN services that are not yet blocked and avoid using Russian apps.

Using a VPN service, you can watch Ukrainian television and read Ukrainian media online. You can watch Ukrainian TV on Youtube, Kyivstar TV, Megogo, Omega TV and many other platforms, as well as in the Diia app.

For official statements and important information, be sure to check the websites (official social media pages that have a verification mark — a blue tick) of Ukrainian government agencies. However, you should be careful not to come across a fake website created by the enemy.

Internet radio

Search for Ukrainian radio broadcasting on the radioplayer.ua platform, as well as on the website or in the Suspilne Radio app:

app for iOS
app for Android

Radio

Residents living close to the frontline have a chance to catch Ukrainian radio on regular receivers. Turn on the radio in your car, smartphone, or find a battery-powered radio and search for ” Ukrainske Radio”, “Promin”, or “Kultura” on the FM band. The frequencies for your region can be found on the “Suspilne” website.

Commercial radio stations, such as “Hit FM” and “Melody”, also broadcast Ukrainian programs. Look for frequencies in the FM band for your region on the stations’ websites.

Russian propaganda works in a complex way. To resist it, it is important to know the propaganda techniques used by Russians. Then you can understand when propaganda is working against you when you perceive information.  Its main technique is shameless and aggressive accusation of “everyone and everything” so that residents of the occupied territories cannot distinguish right from wrong.

The main techniques:

An information-psychological special operation, or IPSO, is distinguished from a news story by the coordinated unfolding of a certain scenario in the information field, consisting of a cascade of news, statements, events, and comments by so-called experts. These are campaigns with regular repetition of theses. IPSO can last for a month or more. To achieve the goal, these operations have their own dynamics and repeatability. The enemy creates manipulative information puzzles, hoping that a person will put them together and draw the conclusions necessary for the enemy.

One recent example of Russian IPSO is the sharp increase in the number of hostile informational materials in the infospace aimed at disrupting mobilization. These are various kinds of “advice” on how to avoid mobilization, materials with significant exaggeration of losses of our troops, negative materials about the mobilization itself, the work of the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers, warnings about lack of or insufficient training, etc.

How do you know if a source is fake/propagandist?

A number of Telegram channels with a large number of subscribers claiming to be Ukrainian actually work for the aggressor. You can tell that a source is fake by the following signs:

The occupiers often create fake pages of Ukrainian officials and government agencies to spread false information.

What distinguishes them from the real ones:

• Date of creation. As a rule, fake channels have been created recently or renamed.
• They don’t have the blue mark on social media that most official government channels have.
• The names of such pages may contain mistakes and Russianisms.

Russians also often create fake screenshots of messages allegedly from official channels, which are distributed in chats, groups, or anonymous channels. For example, questionable channels can use this principle to publish fake messages about evacuation.

How to prevent this? 

It is not always possible to understand that a source or information you see is fake. So, before trusting the information, we advise you to find the official website (with the gov.ua domain) of the authority or official, or their Telegram and Facebook pages and make sure that this information is there.

A few rules to avoid being deceived by a fake or propagandistic source of information:

1. Check your subscriptions by reading the list of propagandistic or pro-Russian Telegram channels compiled by the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security.
2. Read not only the headlines, but also check the source of the information, whether official sources write about it, and whether the channel doesn’t distort the information.
3. Pay attention to whether the source of the information is not an unknown “dump site”.
4. Check what the Telegram channel shared at the beginning of the full-scale invasion: whether or not it published demoralizing posts about “everything is lost” and statements by representatives of the Russian regime.
5. Consider whether the information is presented in an emotional, aggressive manner. Words like “shock,” “brutality,” etc. that are used too often may indicate that you are being manipulated.
6. Often, such channels publish fake or archival photos of completely different events than they describe in the photo description. Special programs will help you check the origin of the photo: Google Search by Images, TinEye. And Fotoforensics or Duplichecker will help you view pixel changes. This will help you find out if the photo has been edited.
7. Don’t be overconfident. People who think they can easily distinguish fakes are more likely to be led and spread falsehoods than those who have doubts.

Which of the sources available in the occupied territories can be trusted? 

The occupiers block access to Ukrainian online publications, government websites, social networks, TV channels, and mute radio stations. However, access to Ukrainian resources in messengers can still be maintained.

In Viber, official channels are marked with a blue bird. Some of them are available in the “Useful” tab in the mobile application. For example:

President of Ukraine
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
Ministry of Health of Ukraine
Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security
Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council
Minister Mykhailo Fedorov 

If there is a threat of your smartphone falling into the wrong hands, follow these instructions to safely read news on Viber:

• if there is a danger, don’t subscribe to channels, look for them in the search box in the application or in the “Useful” tab to read;
• If necessary, clear your search history as follows: when you go to the search bar next to the “Recent” section, click “Clear”.

Most official channels on Telegram are also marked blue:

President of Ukraine
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
Ministry of Health of Ukraine
Vice Prime Minister – Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine
Ministry of Culture and Information Policy
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
StratCom of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Defence Intelligence of Ukraine
Security Service of Ukraine
National Police of Ukraine
State Border Guard Service of Ukraine
Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security

You can find the truthful news about the situation in the country here:

UA:Pershyi TV channel
UA: Radio Promin
UA: Ukrainske Radio.

The “Yedynyi Novyny” TV marathon can be found on an open satellite. The signal is received by any satellite receiver, TVs with a built-in satellite receiver.

Reception parameters:

• Satellite: Hotbird 13;
• frequency: 11,219 MHz;
• polarization: H (horizontal);
• symbol rate: 29 900;
• error correction: FEC 3/5.

However, if the occupiers block the signal, you can listen to “Yedynyi Novyny” via the Internet radio radioplayer.ua, provided you have the appropriate application installed.  Or check the “Diia” app, “Services” section – “Diia TV”.

We recommend keeping valuable information that is not safe to store in your phone’s memory on external media or in the cloud.

Remove from the chats discussions on all topics that may provoke the occupiers: discussions of political issues, military operations, condemnation of Putin’s and Russia’s policies. Don’t save photos of military equipment, destruction, screenshots from the news, etc.

Delete all information from your phone that may seem suspicious to the occupiers:

• any patriotic information
• memes about the enemy;
• photos of the Ukrainian military, their equipment, positions, military facilities;
• photos of the occupiers, their equipment, positions, recorded facts of their crimes;
• backup copies of your smartphone, if you have created them;

Uninstall applications that can provoke the occupiers: for example, ” Ye PPO” or the Signal messenger, because the occupiers often look for it in phones. If you cannot permanently uninstall Signal and communicate with the defense forces through it, always have a clear explanation for why you installed it (it works better in poor connection, etc.)

Don’t keep contacts with military ranks or positions (“Serhiy Major”, “Vasyl Sergeant”, etc.), as well as other pseudonyms (“Johnny”, “Tony”, etc.). It is better to call them by their first and last name, which can be fictitious but realistic.

Also, clear your browser history, bookmarks, and messenger chats. But at the same time, leave something neutral, for example, a website with a weather forecast, movie recommendations, neutral correspondence with your wife and relatives.

The ideal option is to have a second smartphone that you carry with you and give to the occupiers during possible searches. However, if you use a modern smartphone, let the backup phone be roughly the same as your main one.

The State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine, the National Resistance Center and the Rakuten Viber team participated in the development of the recommendations.

Who organizes the evacuation?

Regional military-civilian administrations together with specialists of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society, police, SES and local authorities.

How is the population informed about the evacuation?

Through all possible channels – radio, television, mobile communications, social media, messengers, mobile groups with loudspeakers. You should be informed of the evacuation plan, information about gathering points, routes, and contacts of evacuation headquarters.  If you are in doubt, for example, about the reliability of what you hear over the loudspeaker, be sure to check it with information from other sources.

Evacuation announcements are published by:

• Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine (website, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter),
• Vice Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk (Facebook, Telegram)
• Heads of regional administrations and heads of communities. Find the official telegram channel of the head of your administration here.

If you don’t have any access to sources of information about the evacuation, call the:

• The hotline of the Armed Forces of Ukraine 0 800 507-028
• 101 or 102
• Free round-the-clock hotline of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights — 0 800 501-720

When russia wants to legitimize the occupation of Ukrainian territories, it resorts to fake referendums. For Ukraine and the international community, their “results” are legally paltry, such that they can’t cause any consequences.

For the citizens of Ukraine, participation in the “voting” becomes an assistance to the enemy, as it facilitates the realization of the tasks that they set before themselves. The best way out is to prevent the occupiers from presenting the required amount of ballots filled out by people. Let even these bulletins play only a propaganda role and have no legal force.

For the residents of the occupied territories, the campaign of fake expression of will also carries a threat as it is a kind of “roll call” of loyalists to the illegal russian administration. People who “vote” voluntarily and without coercion are seen by the occupiers as potential helpers and collaborators.

The best strategy for not participating in fake referendums and other manifestations of russian occupation policy is to leave the temporarily occupied territory. Avoid participating in the pseudo-referendum carefully, without exposing yourself to the danger of violence or getting into “black lists” of russian punishers.

To develop additional strategies for evading participation in a fake referendum, cooperate with acquaintances whom you trust. Together, it’s possible to make a more effective resistance to the actions of the occupiers.

Do not under any circumstances help the russian invaders in organizing a pseudo-referendum: don’t agree to work in the commission, don’t agitate for participation in the so-called “referendum”, don’t provide material and logistical assistance in organizing the process. Such actions are a serious offense and involve criminal liability (up to 15 years of imprisonment).

It is important to understand: the referendum show organized by the kremlin is an act of desperation, because the enemy’s plans have failed. russia will lose the war.

Ukraine consistently implements the policy of de-occupation, the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberate Ukrainian land. The power of the occupiers is temporary.

Information on the movements and location of enemy troops – equipment and people – should be collected carefully to avoid putting yourself in danger. 

1. Don’t ask the occupiers direct questions about their troops, and don’t be aggressive during conversations. 
2. Take videos and photos using some kind of cover or hiding place to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. In advance, think of a legend to explain what you were doing at that location.
3. As soon as you send a photo or video to the defence forces, delete it from your phone’s memory. Also, delete all correspondence at once. 
4. Try not to keep notes, but rather memorise the information. If you need to write it down, think of a way to encrypt it, for example, in the form of a shopping list or a list of medicines.

Where to send information for the defence forces:

Before writing something to a bot, check it using a special website https://dovidka.info/botchecker/. This way, you won’t come across Russian counterfeits that have identical spellings but may have different characters. Here are some of the useful chatbots.

Important! For authorisation, you need to confirm your identity in the Diia app so that the service is not used by the occupiers.

@sprotyv_official — here you can report on collaborators in the occupied territory, crimes committed by Russians and their other actions

@stop_marauder_ua_bot — designed to collect information about looters who steal other people’s property during the war

@stop_russian_war_bot — to report on the enemy’s movements, combat positions of the occupiers, and their location in the rear

@Traitor_Search_bot — collects information about traitors who collaborate with the occupiers; Internet users who spread information and help the enemy continue the invasion 

@dvb_np_bot — Telegram-bot of the National Police, where you can report supporters of the “Russian world”

@evorog_bot — with the help of this chatbot, you can report the movements of Russian military and equipment