PAVLOGRAD, Ukraine — As the Ukrainian army went to war on Thursday, so did an army of volunteers and activists who for years have propped up the country’s poorly funded military with donated warm clothing, medical equipment, walkie-talkies and even food.
In the fighting between the armies of two nation states, this type of grass-roots support for the military might not seem very relevant. But it played a pivotal role in the more limited Russian incursions in 2014 and 2015. And the dozens of well-organized volunteer groups hold the potential today to resist Russian soldiers if they remain as occupiers.
“We were getting ready for this for years,” said Yuri Skribets, a neurosurgeon who volunteers as a battlefield paramedic. He belongs to the Medical Battalion Hospitaliers, based here in this eastern Ukrainian town now just a few hours’ drive from the reported positions of advancing Russian troops.
In a brick warehouse converted into their headquarters, with a giant wood stove blazing, the volunteer paramedics spent Thursday packing backpacks and pouches with emergency medical supplies, mostly just what was needed to stanch bleeding: tourniquets, coagulating agent, bandages.
The organization of volunteer doctors and paramedics has operated for years along the frontline of the eastern Ukraine war, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces. The volunteers take military casualties to a civilian hospital to ease the burden on the army, and it was with a blend of anger and determination that they prepared for a possibly far bigger task today.
“The whole world is weak,” said Mr. Skribets. “Nobody really resisted Putin, and this is the result.”
On a wall hang portraits of eight volunteer medics from the group killed in fighting in the east, which began in 2014 but was always confined to a slice of Ukraine, in contrast to the much broader attack begun by Russia on Thursday.
Votive candles stood on a shelf below the portraits, and some items to remember the volunteers: uniform patches, a small collection of jagged shrapnel, photographs.
The government of President Volodymyr Zelensky over the past year has tried to formalize the work of such organizations, which range from mild-mannered nongovernmental groups to armed and politically active paramilitaries, into a national group under military command, called the Territorial Defense Forces. This work picked up last fall, as Russia massed troops.
The Defense Forces together with independent groups are seen as the kernel of a potential insurgency against Russian occupation.
“A lot of ordinary people are ready to resist if officials in Kyiv give up,” said Oleksandr Isenko, a volunteer paramedic. Has the medical wing of this movement laid plans to treat wounded fighters in secret locations? “No comment,” he responded.
Anna Fedyanovich, the deputy director of the group, said all the medical supplies are donated, and doctors and nurses volunteer their time.
“I think our army won’t allow an occupation,” she said, but didn’t sound too hopeful. Citing a statement President Biden made before the Russian attack, she said, “Russia has a list of volunteers and patriots” to arrest.
That means people like her. She worried members of the group would be quickly betrayed by neighbors in a town where pro-Russian sentiment is common, should the Russian army turn up.
“Everybody has a neighbor who is ready to betray them,” she said. “I don’t know how I could remain here and not be arrested, maybe tortured,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine staying here.”
