Ukraine’s partisans are hitting Russian soldiers behind their own lines

took the strategic rail-hub city of Melitopol on the third day of the war, their route apparently greased by Ukrainian turncoats. Controlling the city, a crucial segment of Vladimir Putin’s land bridge to Crimea, has proven somewhat trickier. Every few days brings a surprising report: an armoured train destroyed and a grenade attack on a command post (May 18th); railway tracks and a radar station blown up (May 22nd); a pro-Ukrainian rally (May 29th); and a collaborator’s house hit by an explosion (May 30th). Ukraine claims its partisans have killed more than 100 Russian soldiers behind enemy lines in Melitopol. “Our people are doing everything to make sure the land burns under the feet of the occupiers,” says , Ivan Fedorov, now safe in Ukrainian-controlled territory. Melitopol is the unofficial capital of Ukraine’s resistance. Since mid-March the war maps produced by the American-based Institute for the Study of War show it covered in stripes, meaning it is territory where partisans are active. But it is far from the only place that has seen such operations. In neighbouring , a Russian-controlled airbase has been blown up nearly two dozen times. In Enerhodar, Andrii Shevchyk, the collaborationist mayor, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt. In Izyum, hungry Russian soldiers were purportedly given spiked pies by a seemingly friendly old lady, according to a telephone conversation between a Russian soldier and his girlfriend that was intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence; eight of them reportedly ended up dead. When Russians abandon tanks or petrol trucks, Ukrainian farmers tow them away. Reports of explosions at arms dumps trickle in from the occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.