Technology is deepening civilian involvement in war

Submission Statement

The line between civilian and combatant is becoming increasingly blurred. Decentralized networks and distributed sensors mean that any individual civilian could be a lethal threat to the soldiers in their proximity. In turn, the paranoia this engenders drives soldiers to treat even ordinary civilians with suspicion and hostility, sometimes with grievous consequences. This dynamic poses a challenge for all future occupying powers, especially those without Russia's propensity for brutality against the innocent. This article focuses on the problems Ukrainian civilian resistance has posed to Russia, but disambiguating when a collaborator becomes a valid military target remains a thorny issue that Ukraine will have to deal with as they plan on pushing into areas that Russia has occupied for close to a decade now.

This article is the fourth in a series by the Economist focused on lessons learned from the Ukraine war. The articles are written for a layman audience, but even dedicated watchers can derive value from the interviews and novel information sprinkled throughout. I plan on posting them in sequence here, and the full set of 7 articles can be found here.

Shashank Joshi is The Economist‘s defence editor. Prior to joining The Economist in 2018, he served as Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and Research Associate at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Programme.

Early in the war 20 Russian fuel tankers rolled into Sedniv, a small town in Chernihiv province, north of Kyiv. “The locals called us,” says Major-General Viktor Nikolyuk, commander of Ukrainian forces in the north, “and said: what should we do?” His answer was simple: “Drain them.” Locals on horses and tractors, carrying bottles, barrels and teapots, siphoned off fuel with the cry of Slava Ukraini—glory to Ukraine. The general could hardly believe it when another round of tankers appeared shortly afterwards. Those, too, were relieved of their cargo.

Small wars are fought by a country’s armed forces. Total wars are waged by entire nations. Civilians have played a huge role in the defence of Ukraine. When Ukrposhta, Ukraine’s national postal agency, held a competition to design a stamp, the winning entry depicted a tractor towing away a captured Russian tank—one of the war’s most iconic images. When Kyiv was under threat, civilians mixed Molotov cocktails to hurl at invading armoured vehicles. Volunteers have raised money for vehicles and drones. The Serhiy Prytula Foundation, a civilian charity, even bought a satellite for the army. “Kyiv has placed cross-society resistance at the heart of its national defence,” writes Hanna Shelest of Ukrainian Prism, a think-tank.

Digitally enabled popular resistance on this scale would have been largely impossible 15 years ago. Jack McDonald of King’s College London points out that, when America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, less than 1% of the local population had access to the internet. In Syria in 2011, when a civil war was already under way and mobile-phone footage of combat became widespread, the rate was still only 22%. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 it had reached 46%. When it did it again last year the figure had shot up to almost 80%. “What you’re seeing in Ukraine,” he says, “is what’s going to be standard.”

A core principle of international humanitarian law is that armed forces must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. But if civilians are building drones, hauling military gear over the border from Poland, reporting on troop movements through apps and correcting artillery fire over video chat, do they become legitimate military targets? The Geneva Conventions lay down that civilians lose protection “for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities”. But what this means is hotly disputed.

All this presupposes that armies are making good-faith efforts to discriminate between civilians and soldiers—that they care about the laws of war. If Ukrainian civilians have so often been willing to jeopardise their status as non-combatants, it may be because Russia’s army has shown scant regard for such niceties. General Nikolyuk recalls Russian troops establishing a headquarters in a school in Yahidne, a village south of Chernihiv. Hundreds of locals were imprisoned in the basement. On another occasion in nearby Lukashivka, he says Russian soldiers, spotting a Ukrainian drone, forced women and children to walk down the street as human shields. “What do you do in such cases? You bite your fists with impotence and that’s it.”