Russia's Shadow War: How Domestic Saboteurs Are Eating Putin's War

The Unthinkable Act

There are Russians inside Russia who are helping Ukraine bomb their own country. Not conscripts. Not coerced informants. Volunteers who travel between Moscow and Tbilisi, hide homemade explosives near airbases, and trail senior officers on foot — all knowing that capture means a terrorism charge and decades behind bars.

The revelation comes from a BBC World Service documentary by Polish journalist Marcin Mamon, featuring two men who asked to be identified only as Ivan and Foma. Both confirmed they work with GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate. Both described operations targeting strategic bombers, munitions factories, and senior Russian officers. Both insisted their actions are aimed at accelerating the collapse of Vladimir Putin’s regime — which they believe depends entirely on the war’s outcome.

Inside the Network

The operational picture that emerges is far more organized than most analysts assumed.

Foma, a former Russian insider now based in Poland, runs an online training network for undercover volunteers across Russia. He teaches them how to trail military officials, collect identifying data, and avoid digital detection. His team does not carry out attacks. They feed intelligence to GUR, which decides whether to act.

When Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov was killed by an explosive device under his car in Moscow last December, Foma admitted he had provided surveillance data on him. Sarvarov, according to Foma, lived alternately with a mistress and a colleague, constantly changing his schedule. “Keeping track of him took quite an effort,” Foma texted Mamon later.

Ivan operates on the ground inside Russia. He claims involvement in reconnaissance for drone strikes on Russian military airfields and munitions factories — including what he described as preparations for attacks on strategic bombers. In one video shared with Mamon, he is seen concealing components near a Russian military airfield. He also described a close call: his car was stopped by authorities while he carried homemade explosives. He was not detected.

Foma estimates his network numbers between 300 and 500 people, though this figure cannot be verified. Of those, about three dozen are actively involved in surveillance and logistical support, split between Russia, Ukraine, and other European locations.

GUR has confirmed both men work for the agency. But when pressed on whether Ivan could be trusted, a handler’s response was revealing: “I’m not sure of anyone, except myself.” Ukraine acknowledges it uses secret agents for domestic operations but has never officially claimed responsibility for targeted killings. Kyiv’s pattern of plausible deniability makes independent verification nearly impossible.

What the Strikes Actually Achieve

The tactical impact is difficult to measure precisely. Ivan’s involvement in the June attack on Russia’s largest military drone factory at Yelabuga — which one report said killed a person — suggests the network is reaching critical infrastructure. But the broader significance may be psychological and strategic rather than purely destructive.

Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian military targets has inflicted measurable damage on airfields, storage depots, and production facilities. Each successful strike forces the Russian military to disperse assets, alter command structures, and divert resources to point-defense — all of which degrade combat effectiveness. The assassinations of senior officers, including Gen Sarvarov and reportedly Lt Gen Igor Kirillov in December 2024, send a different message: no rank provides immunity.

Perhaps most strategically significant is what Foma’s database reveals. He showed Mamon what he described as a mapping of military storage warehouses, unit locations, and the residential patterns of strategic bomber pilots — all compiled from open sources, insider contacts, and volunteer surveillance. If accurate, this represents a systematic exposure of Russian military logistics that any adversary would prize.

The Regime Problem

The deeper story here is not about Ukraine’s intelligence capabilities but about Putin’s domestic control.

Ivan noted that most ideologically motivated Russians capable of this work have either fled the country or ended up in prison. The pool of willing volunteers is shrinking. Yet those who remain are willing to risk everything — not for money, but because they believe the war threatens Russia’s existence.

This is a regime legitimacy problem dressed as an intelligence operation. The Kremlin has spent years building a narrative of national unity and external threat. But the fact that Russians are voluntarily providing GUR with the locations of generals’ homes and the schedules of bomber pilots suggests that narrative has not penetrated deeply enough to suppress dissent entirely.

Foma’s comment about Ivan’s ability to travel freely is telling. Ivan crosses between Russia and Georgia regularly without raising suspicion. Foma explained this as evidence of “holes in the country’s governance” — corruption, bureaucratic indifference, and systemic dysfunction that allow determined individuals to operate despite surveillance.

If Ivan were a double agent working for the FSB, logic suggests he would share knowledge of Ukrainian attack plans. Yet more than a year before a major drone strike on Russian airfields, Ivan told Mamon such an attack was coming — without saying when or where. That he kept this information to himself, rather than reporting it to Russian authorities, undermines the most obvious alternative explanation for his activities.

What Comes Next

Several dynamics will shape how significant this shadow war becomes.

First, the operational tempo is likely to increase. As Ukraine faces manpower shortages on the front, asymmetric operations inside Russia offer a force multiplier. Drone factories, fuel depots, and command nodes are soft targets compared to fortified positions. The Yelabuga strike and the Sarvarov assassination demonstrate that the model works.

Second, the Russian state will respond with repression — but repression has limits. Arresting hundreds of volunteers requires intelligence that may not exist. The very decentralization that makes the network hard to dismantle also makes it hard to target systematically. Foma’s warning about group chats and digital traces is telling: the network survives precisely because it refuses to cohere.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, this operation reveals that Putin’s war is generating its own opposition from within. These are not foreign-backed proxies. They are Russians who have concluded that defeating Ukraine is existential to their own country. That distinction matters. It means the resistance is resilient to Kremlin narratives about foreign manipulation, and it means the pool of potential recruits, however small, is growing as the war drags on.

Ivan’s final remark to Mamon captured the mood: “Putin won’t live forever.” Fear follows him everywhere, he said, but not hopelessness. The question for the Kremlin is whether it can contain the fear long enough to win the war — or whether the people quietly disabling its weapons system from inside will prove to be the more decisive force.

For now, the saboteurs are winning a war within a war. And Ukraine, for all its battlefield constraints, is finding that sometimes the most effective weapons are hidden in the trunks of cars crossing into Georgia.