The context of this question has changed. The original question came with question details I’m including below of a Ukrainian civilian seeking advice from military veterans on survival strategies during the 2014 Ukraine Crisis the last time Russia invaded the country. Most of the answer remains relevant to the current Ukraine War happening currently. I’m resharing the answer, with context for those readers, both in the Ukraine and the rest of the world, who may need it.
Original Question Details:
Hi, I am Mark and I am from Ukraine. Today we had around 40 000 troops mobilized due to possible military invasion threat from Russia. I wasn't mobilized but if Russia attacks I will volunteer anyway.
Our government doesn't supply their soldiers with nothing but a AK-47 + a few mags + military cloths, NO GEAR.
So... I have never been in a service, I have never had any kind of training of that sort. For all that I know, there is a possibility I will be in a ditch shooting Russians in a couple of weeks.
So I am asking anyone who had ANY military training to advice me on how to survive during wartime. (Especially Joshua Alexander). He says he doesn't believe in stupid questions - lets hope he is for real. Please help, please promote if you can. Thank you.
Mark,
What you are going through now, as an individual and as a people, is one of the most important stories of our time. Many would consider what I am doing by helping you to be reckless and that I should tell you to just sit back and seek shelter. I won't do that. I won't deny you advice I have because of some misplaced sense of right and wrong. I believe the Ukraine should continue to exist and I am proud to support a patriot who is going to do what he is going to do, whatever he is called to do. If not for people like that, Ukraine, as well as any good place worth living in would soon cease to exist. I've compiled everything I could think of that might benefit you in the coming months be it dealing with an insurgency or with the threat of a Russian advance. I've been up writing all night and the sun is rising here, so you'll forgive me for not proofreading this so that the information can get to you sooner. That said I, along with everyone else, sincerely hope you never need anything I mention in this answer, but now you have it. I'm incredibly grateful to have had the chance to get to know you in the few times we've talked and am inspired by your dedication to service. Mostly, I am proud that you would ask me to for advice during this time of your life. Having said that, I want to do everything I can to help you see a day when the Ukraine is at peace.
Semper Fidelis,
Jon
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Know your situation:
Situational awareness will be your most valuable asset throughout. It doesn't matter if we are talking about on guard at night, driving a truck at night, exchanging rumors with other members of your unit or sitting at home watching the news, knowing exactly what is going on will be the thing that let's you make smart decisions or avoid dangerous situations.
At this point what your country is engaged in is insurgency warfare. The nature of insurgency is that you will be fighting an enemy that is elusive and doesn't always operate in face-to-face combat. In fact, they will try to avoid it. Insurgents operate with very few people and a limited budget. To maximize their effect, they will try to do most of their fighting when they aren't actually there or when they aren't in danger. This means that tricks, traps and improvised dangers will be common. For example, be very cautious if you are operating in an area that the enemy has had access to. They may have rigged it with some kind of trap. Piles of trash on the ground could be hiding explosives. Holes could be dug with sharp spikes, poles or sticks which can wound or maim. Abandoned equipment you discover may be booby-trapped. With the advent of cellular phones, the enemy can watch you from anywhere and remotely detonate at any time.
For this reason constant vigilance is your greatest defensive asset. Once you are a uniformed soldier of the Ukraine, you will always be considered a target by the pro-Russian forces. Remember that, at no point from then on will you ever truly be completely safe. Someone less than a hundred kilometers away would love to get their hands on you, no matter what your job is.
You should also consider what your job will be. I can only guess, but if I were put in charge of you, an untrained, inexperienced member of what amounts to a reserve militia, I would not have much faith that you are ready for front line duty. If it were me, I would free up more capable fighting men to do the fighting while having you do other tasks that need to be done, but aren't exactly front line infantry stuff. I would take people like you and use you for rear duties that would involve guarding equipment and logistical tasks, like driving trucks filled with people and cargo. This doesn't mean the rear is a perfectly safe place. When in convoys you are at your most vulnerable and must remain vigilant throughout. It was during these times when, in Iraq, we were attacked by enemy insurgents using improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs. The only thing that could possibly save your life in such an event, is staying focused and watching out for trash on the side of the road that looks out of place.
Insurgents also use civilians for different purposes. One of which is that sometimes they will be used as figurative shields in battle situation, sometimes as literal ones. For example, often times we fought insurgents who would fire rockets or mortars from civilian locations such as schools, hospitals or apartments. When an automatic system fired back at their locations, the evidence showed that the Americans had bombed an apartment building for no apparent reason. Similar tactics are being used today in the warfare that is taking place throughout the Levant. This is an experience situation, because if you are given the chance to make a bad choice, one in which you are not completely aware of your surroundings, you may play into a media trap for the insurgents. If, for example, a person is firing on you and you fire back, not realizing that behind him is a church, school or worse, a crowd of people, you have just given them a massive strategic tool to use against your forces. The insurgents will use the captured evidence to show that your actions are that of tyrannical regime. They will use it as a recruiting mechanism for spies and future insurgency fighters and your fight will become much harder.
Information warfare:
Knowing your situation is vital, but it is also important to know how to gather and communicate information as well. One thing you should start doing is carrying a journal to write down rumors you hear, information you come across, odd observations, or changes in the environment. You need to take the hyper-vigilance and put it to use. Do this especially when out on convoys and on guard detail. Make sure to report anything up your chain of command. What you don't realize is that mundane information to you, may be a missing puzzle piece to a commander somewhere else. If you are always supplying your commanders with puzzle pieces they will make better more informed decisions that will ultimately keep you and your team safer.
You aren't the only person who can be an observer. Teach everyone you know the importance of forward observation. Thinking about how you and your friends can gather information will be vital for all of you to keep going. Try to come up with methods for gathering information that might be specific to you. Consider websites that might be useful for communicating with friends and family across the country and even consider building an internet community to gather and share information on enemy troop movements. If you have people who are willing to help out, you should allow them, making it possible for them to become eyes and ears of the military. This is something that could put them in danger. They would be considered conspirators and collaborators. If they don't want to do something like that, don't ask them to. If they come to you wanting to know how they can help, that's what you should do. Teach them every way you can imagine on how to feed you information about what they hear and see. Learn to filter it and figure out how to get it to command.
You also need to adopt the point of view of a combat journalist. Carry documentation material like pen and paper with you and more importantly, a camera for taking pictures and videos. As this conflict escalates, choices are going to made which will be very ugly. Someone will need to document things to communicate them. There will be times when you will come across something horrible or something which means that your allies are in immediate danger. You must be able to capture this evidence. This is part of being vigilant. By having a means to record data and communicate it, you give your command something to use to make better decisions. As you spend time in the military you will see that worst case scenario is when command does not have enough information. A video or pictures, along with your accounts, could give your command immeasurable amounts of information to act upon, far more than you know.
The second reason that you should consider yourself a combat journalist is that you will be needed to combat enemy efforts at information warfare. Everything that I am telling you is already being done by the enemy. They are taking videos of everything and editing it to suit their needs. If it airs to the public that is because someone wanted it to. Often times insurgents try to maximize their effect by releasing misinformation into the media through doctored videos or by taking events out of context. Eyewitnesses can also be produced, or manufactured, from civilian populations to say and do whatever they want for the camera. These eyewitnesses have a massive impact on spreading information and misinformation to international powers. The word of some middle-of-nowhere farmer can have such a great effect on the hearts and minds of the international community that it can increase how much assistance you receive in the future.What that means is a few months from now, it may bring about billions upon billions of dollars, extra equipment, and allies.
The international public has far more influence on your conflict than you would like to believe. For them, perception is reality and all they need is to perceive that something unjust is going on and they will pull all support from your cause, whether or not what they have been told is the truth.
Sometimes these witnesses are actual supporters, sometimes they are people who have been bribed or intimidated into action. Remember that local accounts of events are often unreliable. People being interviewed don't owe anything to the people recording them. They know that when the camera goes off they won't be protected by the cameraman, and the enemy will still know where they live. They will say whatever they have been told to say so that their family gets to live. That's why you have to be the guy with a camera of your own. You need to be the guy who can disprove what others are saying that isn't true. You need to prove them wrong by showing opposing information that invalidates what they are saying and proves their source to be a liar, invalidating everything they say from that point it on. It will also shifts public opinion in your favor if you can show that the other guy is untrustworthy and should not be allowed to rise to power. Lastly, disproving the eyewitness does not harm him. Remember, he may being forced to say whatever the enemy wants him to say. Even if you disprove him, he has fulfilled his obligation and has committed no crime against his assailants.
Finally, in the event you don't get called up, you should consider starting a blog or vlog on Youtube. You should list what you see, what you hear and everything you know about the conflict and make it a matter of public record. Right now the world is watching you. By communicating and sharing on Quora, where you already have a significant following, you will sway public opinion further in your favor.
Most of this advice won't keep an individual alive in battle. But it may keep a national alive for months. Hopefully when all this is over, you will have many, many more friends to share beers with on celebration day.
Survivalism Practice and training:
As others have shown, the United States military has published many good resources that are available online. I've gone through and added a few that I think will be the most important to you at your level.
INSURGENCIES AND COUNTERING INSURGENCIES
Page on armypubs.army.mil
This will help you understand and combat those who fight utilizing insurgency tactics and techniques. It will help you to identify threat areas in your defense and let you know where to direct your vigilance when in the field. It also gives good tips on the importance of information warfare.
BOOBYTRAPS
Page on www.lexpev.nl
This will train you to better identify dangerous traps which insurgency fighters may use against you.
SURVIVAL
Page on survivalebooks.com
This will teach you many, many good ideas on how to survive in the field. It will give you advice on what and how to pack, and how to live when you don't have a strong logistical backbone to keep you supplied.
FIRST AID
Page on armypubs.army.mil
This is an in depth primer on first aid techniques that are used in training across the United States military. You should learn how to make a first aid kit that you will carry on you at all times. One piece of advice I have not seen mentioned so far is to pack one item that will be considered odd by most people: Tampons. You should carry at least three in your first aid kit. Tampons are made of super absorbent materials that swell to much greater sizes when they take on liquid. This means that they are excellent for stopping bullet wounds. If people laugh, oh well.
BATTLEFIELD INTELLIGENCE
Page on fas.org
This pub will instruct you and others on how to inspect and prepare a battlespace so that you can maximize what you can learn from it and communicate that accurately to others.
The tips that everyone else on this question have given I think have equipped you with immeasurable advice. What I would ask that you do is to try to get some practice applying it before you are forced into it. If you still have time, my advice to you is to start a "camping club". You gather friends who are in the same situation as you are and what to learn the skills they will need if they are called. You plan an outing into the woods. The goal is to put into practice what have learned from studying. The goal isn't to starve yourself or see how far you can go before dying. The goal is to test the advice you have been given, see what works and what doesn't before you are really required to use it. You should try to pack as much as possible into as little a carrying case as you can. You should pack more clothes than you need, more food than you need and more equipment than you need. After a few days, reflect on what was the most important and on the next trip, pack more accordingly. Keep learning how to pack tighter and tighter so that you can be as prepared as possible.
While you are on these camping trips you can also use the time with your friends to exchange information you have learned and train each other. That, is perhaps the best way these trips will help you. The skills you all learn and exchange in these trips may be the very skills which ensure you will still be camping with each other 30 years from now.
Equipment Usage:
As a former Marine marksmanship instructor, I would be shocked and a little more than dismayed if you receive no training whatsoever. But, in such an event, I have done some searching for you. I created a YouTube video playlist that lists as many videos that I could find in a few hours that show good weapons marksmanship techniques and practices. You should familiarize yourself with them:
In it, I have (so far) collected 3 hours worth of video that describe basic marksmanship, care and maintenance of the AK-47 platform, weapons safety rules for firing, various videos for learning to load, reload and stoppage drills, maneuvering, use of cover and concealment, first aid on the battlefield, packing your first aid kit, prioritizing how to set up your gear, as well as a few ideas on equipment you might want to buy. It's made from videos put together by American Army, Marines, and Special Forces as well as Police officers, medical personnel, survivalist experts and even Russian Spetsnaz. Don't be surprised that I included videos from Spetsnaz. They are probably the world's greatest force in terms of the AK-47 weapons platform and it is indeed ironic that you might be using that against them. The complete collection, which I will improve upon in the future, teaches you far more than I possibly could given the 9313 kilometers that currently separate us. Share it with your friends.
If you can, you should get hold of a weapon and try it out. You need to find a friend who has a weapon and let them take you out into the woods to fire it. Do this only after you have watched all the videos I've shown, particularly the weapons safety videos in the beginning. I want to be absolutely clear: This is literally the only time I have ever said that a person should try out shooting without having a trained instructor present. But these are clearly exceptional conditions. In this case, you have indicated a very real possibility that the first time you ever fire a weapon will be when you are under attack. That is the worst time to be firing a weapon for the first time. You need to feel it go off. You need to practice aiming with the sights. You need to spend time performing drills to load and reload, and from what you communicated to me, the Ukrainian government is not prepared to give you that. While on one of your "camping trips" I would suggest that you and your friends run through the training videos with no rounds to practice fundamentals. I'd also suggest that you each take turns to experience pulling the trigger while aiming down range. You need to know what that feels like.
One piece of advice I can give you specifically about the AK-47 is that you will be tempted to use it in the fully automatic setting. This is not the way it is meant to be used. It is a rifle which means that it was intended to be used to fire single shots. Common sense may tell you that firing more rounds is better, but the truth of the matter is that none of them are going to hit the target, besides maybe the first. The AK-47 fires a somewhat larger round than other weapons systems. This means that it has more recoil and you feel a strong kick when you fire it. That recoil has an important effect on the muzzle of the weapon, it will make the weapon jerk backward so much that subsequent shots will no longer be on target. At this point you will just be fighting the weapon to keep it in place, wasting ammunition and declaring to everyone in the vicinity exactly where you are. There are very few times I would ever consider using the automatic fire setting. Focus on placing well-aimed shots.
Another thing that I couldn't find mentioned was the use of a technique the Marines and others use that they remember by reciting the phrase, "I'm up, he sees me, I'm down". This means that you have about one second in the open before a person can see where you are, adjust their aim and fire upon you. You only have that much time to poke your head out, look around and then back down. There are two videos in the list that show drills for this. I just wanted you to know what the drills were for. Never stay in the open.
Safety First
I want to leave you with one last piece of advice and that is to always focus on the safety of you and everyone else around you. Think of it this way, you are surrounded by your friends and teammates. They have guns they have not learned to use. They may not know how the safety works. You have now been given access to a lot of information and you are now responsible for dispensing it to them.
The single greatest killer is accidents and complacency. You need to think about every accident as a potential enemy hit. Every time you or one of your team accidentally points a weapon at each other, that is like the enemy pointing at them. It really doesn't matter if someone is taken out by an accident or enemy action - you are missing someone who might have been able to save your lives. That is the real reason we take care of each other so much out there, because with every one of us who lives, our own chance of survival increases exponentially.
I'll put it to you another way. We had a saying in the Marines, "If you screw up... it won't be you who gets killed." Remember that and teach it to others. Make them realize they are responsible for far more than their own lives.
Final Notes on Insurgency Warfare:
You need to do everything you can to understand insurgency warfare and tactics. You have to obsess about everything they are doing and how they are operating. You're going to need to investigate them from all sources you trust. Know where they are getting their funding, their training and who exactly is giving is giving them support. You may be able to meditate on the situation and figure out holes you wouldn't have thought of because of knowledge only you have. Perhaps your finance background could show a certain pattern of spending and you could help others to lock up funds that are used to fund insurgents based on information you have gained on the ground. I can't tell you, but you need to gain as much information about them as is possible.
Second, you will need to try to understand what tactics they would employ by asking yourself what you would do to cause the most damage to your own forces with the least amount of men, equipment and risk. Creativity is good, but creative ideas can often be situational and not useful. You need to think in terms of replicable, something that an insurgent can teach to another insurgent and use over and over again. Imagine passive resistance strategies that could defeat them. Passive means that no human needs to be involved to think, know, or react to a situation. Humans may not be there or react in time, no matter how well trained they are. The passive defense systems are always active even when human operators are sleeping, eating or incapacitated. An example here is that in the Marines and Army we have large troop carriers. These vehicles are armor plated, but a rocket propelled grenade could do a lot of damage, along with killing or injuring the Marines inside. To defeat this, a special type of fencing, similar to heavy duty rails you might install in a yard, was bolted the vehicles a few feet out. This caught the weapons a few feet out and detonated them in mid air, doing far, far less damage to the vehicle. Speak with other veterans of the conflict you are in to get their knowledge and try to imagine passive ways to defeat every tactic without using people to do it. The passive defenses completely shut down an enemy tactic across the country, saving a lot of lives and severely damaging their capability to harm your people.
Last, you wrote that you are concerned about an invasion by the Russian people. If this is the case then you will really understand why I want you to focus on insurgency. In the event of a Russian invasion, you will become the insurgent. I'll be honest, not many people have faith the Ukrainian government could hold out long against a full scale attack by the Russian military. That means that, in all likelihood, your government will be overrun in a matter of days or weeks. If you decide you still wish to fight you will have to do so much without a structured support of a command that can give you gear, equipment, or even ammunition. You will understand then just how important it was that you learned how to equip yourself and not rely on the gear given to you by the military.
You should also expect that no help will be coming. Imagine the case of the world. I really hope that in such a case the world would come to the defense of the Ukraine, but imagine what that means. Most of the major world powers will now be involved with a direct military conflict between each other. Events like that could easily lead to a full scale world war. There are going to be many, many who would stand in the way of such a thing being risked and that means that the forces of people who want to aid you will be slowed by those who are willing to sacrifice Ukraine for continued peace elsewhere. That means you will be alone, perhaps forever.
Once you are the insurgent you are going to need to take the imagination of those you fought and turn it around on your occupiers. Remember how you tried to devise methods to take down your own defenses? Now you create a plan of implementation. One thing you should study is actually from Russian history. Study the Battle of Stalingrad. As German troops took over parts of the city, many of the fighters who remained were reserve units who transitioned in asymmetric insurgency warfare. It is a great study on urban insurgency warfare from the point of view of the insurgents. A definite source of good advice is a study of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Here you will see insurgency fighters using direct action against Soviet heavy weapons and using cheap methods to bring down a massive war machine. You can learn a lot from it since much of the Russian military philosophy has not greatly changed. More so than that, it will serve as a testament to remind you all what is possible.
You should also consider setting up a fall back location in another country. For you in Kiev, I would look at towns in Belarus along the border. As I see it, the Polesky State Radiological Preserve might be a good place to hide for a short time. As I understand it is the site of the radiation leak from Chernobyl, but this is the route that followers will be afraid to take. Short trips through the reserve will be a safe haven, especially if you set up some sort of safe house, perhaps in the town of Narowlya. Being that it is in a third party country will allow you to continue operations without being hunted down. If they do try to get at you, they risk detection and progressing the fight into yet another nation. Belarus will be preparing to join in the fighting the same way you are now. For Russia, choosing to follow you will come with a massive international backlash and may be enough to sway others to your favor if they haven't already. As I said before, this is what the Taliban did to us in Pakistan and it works. It's a dirty insurgency trick, but it works.
The most important thing that you'd have to remember though is that in the event of such an invasion, you surviving is the best thing you can do to defend your nation. The best tactics are passed on by the survivors. Know your surrounding and know that there are many, if not most times, when you will say, "I can't win this fight." Even, "I may not be able to win this fight." Nothing is worth losing more than an engagement that you aren't sure you can win. This is why insurgents use ambushes and boobytraps. The simple fact is that you can't afford to die in some heroic gesture. It is a waste of resources that will never again be able to support your country. The same goes for your friends. Being brave is being stupid and if they get themselves killed then that is just one less person who later be used to fight and train others. You must live, more for your cause's sake than for your own.
Insurgencies win not when they have won some stunning military battle but when they fought for so long, and whittled down the enemy so much and caused so much cost to the enemy nation, that they no longer view staying as worth the trouble. Those who die in the first weeks in some glorious charge during the preliminary invasion don't help anything. They are great stories to tell, but their names are forgotten by all but their closest friends in less than twenty years. It is the smart insurgent who, months and months later, long after winter has set in, are able to conduct a mission as part of a small team, plant a bomb, head back to town and the next morning wave and smile at the Russian soldiers patrolling their streets, never arising suspicion. That's the person you should become if you are afraid of a Russian invasion.
Only once you show that you are willing and capable of surviving as a burden to the enemy will outside help start to filter your way. Build up your information networks to channel information from the world to you and to the back to who you need to know it. Direct information about the war from your point of view; pictures, videos and testimonies from the inside will gain you support from the outside and put pressure on the Russians government to leave. Learning to survive in the wilderness by relying on your training and your equipment will allow you to make it through the hard times when food and supplies may be scarce. Taking care of your friends and keeping them safe will allow you to continue on fighting long, long after you were supposed to have given up and died off.
While this is happening you will be faced with many choices. All I can hope is that you make choices that you would want to be associated with the history of the Ukraine. Using civilians against their will through bribery, intimidation and murder can get you a long way closer to a victory. Others will instruct you to do what must be done. It doesn't have to. You have to consider with every choice you make in fighting against the occupation if would you want to raise your children under leaders who did the things you are planning to do? If you say no, and there is no other option to gain the victory you want, you should consider the very real possibility the Ukraine you knew is already dead and will never be able to return.
The last thing I am going to leave you with is a question you must ask yourself. Should I give up? Ask yourself everyday. There is a point when nothing you do is worth the lives you will be a part of destroying. Innocent people are always caught in the middle of insurgency warfare. You have to ask if the government you want is worth the risk of your life or the lives of your people that might, and probably many will, be lost. If you are serious about defending your homeland, that is what it will mean. There is a definite point when you have to consider that the Ukraine may in fact be gone as you knew it before. At that point you should leave, flee to some refugee camp and get in contact with people on the outside who can help you. Seek asylum with various nations as best you can and start a new life. Use your new freedom to speak out about the conflict and about your aggressors. You may find one day that giving up allowed you reach out to speak to millions and perhaps save other nations and other people from the same threat you are facing today.
I think that what you are doing is very brave. Accepting the duty of safeguarding your nation's survival is truest act of love a human could display. That is why I wrote to you the best answer I could, given the time you have to read it.
And in the event that my worst fears are realized...
Give them Hell and give them my regards.
Thanks for reading!
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