Overview
- A report published Tuesday synthesizes accounts showing women inside occupied Ukraine have become the backbone of covert human intelligence used to identify Russian command posts, logistics hubs and troop concentrations.
- Operatives work in schools, clinics, aid groups and other civilian roles to observe movements and collect details that are passed through encrypted, compartmentalized channels to Ukrainian handlers.
- Ukrainian services also run online deception operations that pose as women to cultivate Russian soldiers and elicit photos or messages whose metadata or background clues reveal unit locations.
- Refugees and former residents across Europe help verify locations and coordinates using local knowledge, shortening the time from collection to strike in some cases to minutes.
- Resistance members call many of these female operatives “vidmas,” a reclaimed folklore term that signals local legitimacy, and their work raises greater risks for civilians in occupied areas as surveillance and reprisals grow.