Category World News

A train line carrying Russian weapons and supplies crossed the Bryansk region in western Russia, close to the Ukrainian border, over the weekend due to a power outage.

This wasn’t just a blackout, though. Atesh, a member of the Ukrainian resistance movement, set a fire at a nearby substation as the cause of the incident.

The group’s 52, 000 followers on its Telegram channel were informed that “Atesh precisely targets the enemy’s weak points, paralyzing their rear.”

Russia’s forces are facing resistance from the front lines as well as the back as it strengthens its hold on occupied territory in Ukraine. Atesh, one of the so-called “partisan groups,” has become the most active, claiming responsibility for more than half of the sabotage attacks on Russian-controlled territory last year. Its name means “fire” in Crimean Tatar.

The coordinator of the organization, Al Jazeera, stated over Telegram that “we are currently in a war of attrition, and the role of internal resistance is becoming decisive.”

“The occupiers cannot guard every truck or rail meter in their rear,” they claim.

Seven months after the Russian military launched a full-scale invasion of its western neighbor, Atesh was established in September 2022. The representative claims that the organization’s core consists of Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority with long-held grievances against Moscow’s rule, but that there are also Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians.

The representative, who declined to be identified for safety reasons, said, “We realised that Crimea and other captured territories must become a thorn in the occupier’s side from within.”

“We are attempting to bring the Russian military apparatus into its own system.” Every Russian soldier on our soil experiences unrest and their headquarters, logistics, and headquarters are reduced to ashes, according to us.

Sabotage operations

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began with a number of arson attacks on army draft offices, acts of sabotage have been carried out on Russian soil.

Since then, saboteurs have turned to Russian supply trains and railroad infrastructure as their main targets for stifling the Kremlin’s war machine. Russians and Belarusians are among them, as are saboteurs-for-hire that Ukrainian agents have recruited online and saboteurs-for-hire organizations as well as underground organizations like BOAK (the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists).

According to Olha Polishchuk, research manager for the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) conflict monitor, “Sabotage operations are frequently coordinated by the Ukrainian intelligence and the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] and are carried out by people supporting Ukraine or other individuals recruited under the guise of financial reward, threats, or deceit.”

“Decoupling partisan-led operations from those conducted in Ukraine may be challenging. The two often coexist in harmony. Although it’s difficult to establish a direct relationship with the Ukrainian government, we are aware that unidentified actors have been hired online to recruit sabotagers.

Similar tactics have been employed by Russian intelligence, which allegedly pay local criminals to smuggle goods both into Europe and the Ukraine.

More than 50% of the sabotage in Russian-occupied Ukraine in 2025 were caused by Atesh, according to an ACLED report.

Several of its alleged operations took place in Russia, including igniting a locomotive in Rostov and destroying the communications tower of a Russian air defense factory in Tula.

Polishchuk remarked, “The impact is difficult to calculate.

“Many sabotage activities have a limited effect, which may result in inconveniences and resupply delays. However, this can get worse and make Russia spend more money on improvements, security measures, and policing the area’s population.

Although Atesh’s claims of responsibility cannot be independently verified, the organization regularly broadcasts their alleged video and coordinates over Telegram.

The representative for Atesh said, “We strike at the enemy’s most vulnerable points.”

“We choose locations like headquarters, bridges, and ammunition depots that are crucial for logistics or troop command.” Our agents’ knowledge is used to make plans, which are based on reality. We put all of our efforts into action when we learn about an important echelon or ammunition column while always putting safety first.

The organization claims to use only encrypted apps for communication to reduce infiltration from Russian security services.

According to the source, “cells operate independently because individual agents don’t know each other.”

We teach everyone digital hygiene and employ advanced encryption techniques. Our data verification and cross-checking system helps us quickly reduce the threat, even when the FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Service] tries to infiltrate its provocateurs.

The organization claims that Russian sympathisers also support Atesh’s operations.

The representative claimed that the Russian armed forces, the national guard, and even intelligence organizations all have active agents.

“Some do it for ideological reasons, having recognized the peril of war, while others do it for the sake of their families’ futures, realizing the regime’s impending fallout. Their inside information enables us to be informed in advance of combat vehicle movements and what is going on in closed command bunkers.

Atesh claimed to have taught 4, 000 Russian soldiers how to “survive” the war by causing damage to their own equipment by 2023.

Atesh’s activities range from what it calls “propaganda” (placing stickers with its messages over Russian- and Russian-occupied cities) to base, depot, and supply trains reconnaissance, which it shares with Ukrainian intelligence. According to Asesh, its information allegedly sparked a successful wave of Ukrainian strikes in 2023 that forced Russia to relocate its Black Sea Fleet.

Polischuk cited the successful Ukrainian operation coordinated with partisan groups as an example of last year’s massive drone strike on Russian airfields by Ukraine’s Spiderweb operation.

Atesh agents use lethal force if necessary. For instance, the organization claimed that in the southeast of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, it set fire to several Russian servicemen in July.

The partisans’ coordinator stated that “our targets are those who came to our country to kill and traitors who actively participate in repressions against the civilian population.”

Priorities are given to officers who order strikes on cities and neighbors who betray their neighbors.

The partisans are in great danger of losing.

Because of the country’s lenient policies, sabotage activity was born in these circumstances and had to be adjusted to them right away, according to Polishchuk.

She continued, “It is dangerous to express any support for Ukraine in occupied Ukraine and Russia.” Without the proper investigation, those suspected of cooperating with the Ukrainian military may be detained or vanished, even if no evidence is found against them.

She said that despite resistance and sabotage, there is still persistence.

The task of removing Russian occupation from their land is a common theme for many Atesh members.

According to Al Jazeera’s source, “for our people, it’s one endless tragedy, broken only occasionally by brief periods of peace.”

The Crimean Tatars are who?

The Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group that was once oppressed by the Russian Empire after it was overthrown in 18th century, have endured oppression. The most agonizing moment came in 1944 when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of all Tatars to Central Asia after they were suspected of disloyalty during World War II despite the fact that thousands of Tatars had faithfully served in the Red Army and helped to defeat the Nazis.

As many as a third of the trains were herded onto, and one-third of them did not make it.

The Tatars’ removal is regarded as a genocide in contemporary Ukraine. Only decades later, the deportees and their descendants were permitted to return, which sparked conflict with the native Russians and Ukrainians who had settled the region.

Civil rights activists have vanished since the Russians took control of Crimea in 2014, while their Mejlis, the traditional Tatar parliament, has been declared a “terrorist” organization, is still in use. Some were later discovered dead. After Russia gained control, thousands of Crimean Tatars abandoned their homes and headed for the Ukrainian mainland.

Naif Ghawanmeh, 45, sits in front of the fire when the music stops, which is played during Ras Ein al-Auja, an occupied West Bank town. The night is chilly, and for the first time in weeks, everything is still for a moment – the Israeli settlers’ celebrations have finished for the day.

Ras Ein al-Auja, which is located in the Jericho governorate of the eastern West Bank, is now almost completely uninhabited.

The village was one of the last Palestinian herding communities in this part of the Jordan Valley, but now, the herders’ sheep have gone – most of them stolen or poisoned by settlers or sold off by villagers under pressure. The Ras Ein spring, which the nearby settlers have been ostensibly blocking for the past year, has been closed off to the water.

And for the past two weeks, most of the community’s homes have been dismantled. Before they leave, many of the families who were forced to flee have burned their furniture to use by the invaders.

“By God, it’s a difficult feeling,” Ghawanmeh says. He fidgets by the fire, rubbing his face in agony and exhaustion, and is sometimes at a loss for words. ”Everyone left. There is not a single one. They all left. ”

Since the start of this year, about 450 of the 650 Palestinian inhabitants of Ras Ein al-Auja have fled their homes – for many the only place they have ever lived – because of violence by Israeli settlers.

The rest of the Ghawanmeh families are packing up and departing in the coming days, aside from the 14 who claim to have nowhere to go, including a sizable number of children.

This rapid displacement of hundreds of people marks the largest expulsion from a single Bedouin community as a result of Israeli settler violence in modern times – a feat that has elicited taunting celebrations by the encroaching settlers and left lives in ruins for Bedouin families now deprived of shelter, livelihoods and community.

No land, no sheep, no water, no safety

Despite a wave of physical assaults, thefts, threats, movement restraints, and property destruction by settlers, the people of Ras Ein al-Auja had continued to live on their lands until the new year. This is now all too common for rural Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

Settlers have been enabled by rapid growth in the number of settlement outposts springing up across the West Bank. International law prohibits settlements and these outposts. They are also built without the legal permission of Israeli authorities but in practice are largely tolerated and offered protection by Israeli forces, especially in recent years under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to international law, occupying powers like Israel are prohibited from settling occupied territories like the West Bank, where about 700,000 settlers currently live.

In December, another 19 settler outposts built without government approval were retroactively approved by Israel’s government as official settlements. Since 2022, there have been 141 to 210 settlements and outposts in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, totaling nearly 50%.

This recent explosion of settler outposts has given way to a more recent yet even more dangerous phenomenon: shepherding outposts.

These outposts mimic the Bedouin culture with their own grazing flocks, but with a different landscape. They are typically run by a single armed Israeli settler supported by several armed teenagers often funnelled in by government-funded programmes intended to support “at-risk” troubled youth.

According to the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, these settlers had already taken control of roughly 14% of the West Bank by April 2024 by using animal grazing as a means to overthrow Palestinian shepherds and seize their lands. That figure has increased since then by at least tens of thousands of dunums (1 dunum equals 0. Dror Etkes, the founder of Kerem Navot, claims that there is 1 hectare and a quarter of an acre.

The outposts serve as a launching pad for attacks, controls on Palestinian movement and army-coordinated arrests, which have unfolded in places like Ras Ein al-Auja.

Palestinian shepherds, who largely live in these remote areas, depend on settlers to steal and poison their livestock for a living. On top of this, settlers are preventing Palestinian shepherds who still have flocks from accessing the grazing lands they’ve always used. Palestinians are being forced to purchase expensive animal fodder to supplement their flocks by the builders who also use intimidation and violence to enforce them.

Settlers also target the basic resources that Bedouin Palestinians rely on for themselves. The Israeli government forbids electricity to residents of Ras Ein al-Auja, like most other Palestinian communities in Area C, which Israel vetoes. The Israeli Civil Administration, which controls zoning and planning in Area C, rarely grants permits for Palestinians to build infrastructure, including connecting to the grid or installing solar energy systems. The settlers have frequently destroyed the solar panels the villagers have constructed.

In addition, these Palestinian shepherding communities, often located in dry regions, are now denied sufficient access to water, including from the lush springs found in Ras Ein al-Auja which once made this village one of the most prosperous of the shepherding communities.

According to Ghawanmeh, “they prevented us from getting water.” “They prevented us from bringing the sheep to the water and getting water from the spring. ”

Near-total impunity

Israeli settlers have also been emboldened by a wide-scale armament programme spearheaded at the start of Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the near-total impunity they enjoy when they carry out attacks. Although there have been a few court decisions in favor of Palestinians and against settlers, they are uncommon.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1,800 settler attacks – about five per day – were documented in 2025, resulting in casualties or property damage in about 280 communities across the West Bank, and besting the previous year’s record of settler attacks by more than 350. In the West Bank in 2025, settlers or Israeli forces killed 240 Palestinians, of which 55 were children.

These unprecedented levels of settler and soldier violence alongside the wholesale deprivation of basic resources that rural Palestinians need to survive have led to the erasure of dozens of rural Palestinian communities.

According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, the Israeli military forced about 40,000 people from Tulkarem and Jenin’s refugee camps in January and February 2025. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, settler violence has forced out 44 Palestinian communities in the West Bank consisting of 2,701 people, nearly half of whom are minors. There have been partially transferred to another three additional communities, which total 452 people. These people end up wherever they can find a place to stay, resulting in fractured communities and families.

In the West Bank, these displacement figures have not been seen in decades.

Two years of psychological strain

For 27 months, Ras Ein al-Auja has been subjected to all of these types of attacks and restrictions. In the last year, several Israeli shepherding outposts have appeared at various locations throughout the village, which total 20,000 dunums (20 km or 7). 7sq miles), and have come increasingly closer to Palestinian homes.

An exhausted Ghawanmeh describes the haphazard shifts the men of his village have been working overtime to keep watch. “If you sleep, the settlers will burn your house. ”

Under the pressure of settler attacks, poisonings and thefts, the number of sheep belonging to the community has dwindled from 24,000 to fewer than 3,000. Nine solidarity activists, some progressives from Israel and others from other nations, were required to maintain a 24-hour security presence because settler attacks and invasions have become so frequent.

Without anywhere else to go – and knowing from both settler threats and accounts from displaced relatives elsewhere that settlers would likely follow them anyway – the people of Ras Ein al-Auja had hung on by a thread.

That is until the most recent settler base.

Following a pattern seen in other now-displaced Bedouin communities like nearby Mu’arrajat, some of whose inhabitants fled to Ras Ein al-Auja, settlers began erecting outposts directly next to people’s homes at the beginning of the year – right in the middle of the community.

According to Ghawanmeh, “life has completely stopped ever since.” Families have barricaded themselves inside their houses, terrified of the settlers who now routinely graze their flocks just outside Palestinian homes.

Then, as a result of the recent attacks, more families were forced to flee and bring the last of their sheep with them. Almost three-quarters of the community has now gone. Although the majority of these families reside in the cramped towns and cities of Area A, which accounts for 18% of the West Bank and is run by the Palestinian Authority, are now dispersed throughout the West Bank.

As a result, these communities’ centuries-old traditions as Bedouins are coming to an end.

According to Ghawanmeh, there is a saying among Bedouins that says, “Upbringing outweighs origins.” “It means you were raised here, you eat from the land, you drink from the land, you sleep on the land. It is from you, and you are. ”

He continues, “It is very, very difficult to leave your house and your village.” But we are forced to. ”

The children who remain have been left rudderless and afraid at night as they look at empty, scarred patches of land where once their friends and family lived. According to Ghawanmeh, “children are scared, scared that the settlers, the [settler security guards] will come.”

Al Jazeera requested comment from the Israeli military about the accusations made in this article and to ask for details about what action is being taken to prevent settler attacks on Palestinian communities, including Ras Ein al-Auja. No response was provided.

I won’t be happy if you don’t sing along until tomorrow, I promise.

As the swell of violence and land thefts gives way to a steady exodus of the last remaining villagers, a couple of musicians come to provide some relief from another day of traumatic separation and displacement.

Kai Jack, a professional contrabass player and solidarity activist, says, “I hope they will feel seen, and I hope they will feel happy for at least a few moments, and that they can feel like children.”

About a dozen children huddle in plastic chairs in a tin shack that once served as the meeting place for the community’s many families to hear this rare performance. The children begin to clap and sing to songs from the classics Wein a Ramallah (Where? ), then relax and start chanting a few Palestinian folk songs. To Ramallah).

The kids even manage to make a few smiles for the first time in a few weeks.

And then, Jack and the accompanying violinist, Amalia Kelter Zeitlin, settle into playing the Palestinian lullaby Yamma Mawil al-Hawa (Mother, What’s with the Wind? . . . The children’s mothers, looking on from the sidelines, begin to softly sing along:

My life will continue as a result of my sacrifice for freedom. ”

The mothers give rounds of applause to the children as the song comes to an end. “Beautiful? Jack inquires.

“Very,” replies one of the mothers who explains how she helps her child fall to sleep with this very song. And it has been a long time since they were sleeping well. ”

A few of the remaining Ghawanmeh brothers leave as the performance draws to a close and the audience members gather around Jack’s enormous bass. They soon find themselves thinking about their unavoidable expulsion.

“These songs are for the children,” Naif Ghawanmeh says. We are exhausted inside, she said. Very tired. ”

One of his small nephews, Ahmed, just 2 years old, begins to sing the chorus of Wein a Ramallah. The atmosphere is almost festive for a brief moment. But while he is happy the children are relaxing, Ghawanmeh shrugs it off himself.

By the way, he says, “By God, look at me,” as the settlers are burning whatever supplies they didn’t want to bring with them. “Even if you sing for me until tomorrow, I won’t be happy. You see, I’m inside exhausted. For two years, I’ve been suffering from oppression, hardship and problems day and night from the settlers.