Democratic and Civic Resilience against Hybrid War
Dr. Oleksandra Keudel, Col. (Ret.) Andrii Ordynovych — moderated by Amber French-Griette.
Beneath Ukraine’s visible armed defence lies a poorly documented yet highly impactful story of civil resistance and unarmed civilian-based defence.
Drawing on two presentations, this webinar traces how Ukrainian society has organized itself to resist, adapt, and endure Russia’s full-scale invasion. Col. (Ret.) Andrii Ordynovych maps a long democratic lineage, from the Kyivan Rus’ veche and Magdeburg-law town councils to the Cossack Zaporizhian Sich and today’s civilian-based defence, contrasting two concepts of freedom, svoboda and volia, that still shape Ukrainian self-organization. He outlines the decentralized, networked, and highly professionalized forms of resistance now in use: territorial defence, nonviolent resistance under occupation, information warfare, economic resilience, and international civic mobilization, alongside the doctrine, laws, and competencies needed to sustain them.
Dr. Oleksandra Keudel, drawing on joint research with Oksana Huss across 127 Ukrainian local governments, introduces a “3C” framework: resilience as coping with crisis while a defined core value or function remains intact. Her findings show how local communities circulate knowledge, mobilize resources, and experiment their way through hybrid war, often faster than formal institutions can respond.
Together, the presentations argue that relying on a population’s spontaneity once conflict erupts means missing the opportunity to flex our strongest strategic advantage vis-a-vis authoritarian regimes: our democracy arsenal. Advance preparation for civilian-based defense must be doctrinally recognized, operationally supported, and integrated into governance well before crisis strikes, offering lessons for Europe’s own security architecture, learned WITH Ukraine rather than merely observed from afar.
Speakers
Col. Andrii H. Ordynovych (retired) is Co-Chair of ONM’s board and Director of Strategic Partnerships with the Ukrainian Freedom Fund. He has held several key positions in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including Deputy Director of Military Cooperation and Military Attaché in the USA. Colonel Ordynovych also served as the Deputy Military Representative of Ukraine to NATO (Mission of Ukraine to NATO). He received multiple awards, including the USA Legion of Merit and the Defense Medal of France.
Read his 2026 article in the “Ukrainian Freedom: Collective Agency in National Defense” issue of ONM’s Across Fault Lines: A Civic Journal.
Download Col. Ordynovych’s PPTDr. Oleksandra Keudel is a political scientist, an Associate Professor, Vice Dean for Research in the Department of Social Science, and the Founding Director of the Center for Democratic Resilience at the Kyiv School of Economics. Dr. Keudel serves on ONM’s Scientific Advisory Board. She has extensive experience in research and practice-oriented policy consulting on local self-government, public engagement, and international municipal partnerships in Ukraine.
Read her 2026 article in the “Ukrainian Freedom: Collective Agency in National Defense” issue of ONM’s Across Fault Lines: A Civic Journal.
Download Dr. Keudel’s PPTModerator
Amber French-Griette is an expert on wartime civic resistance, focusing on unarmed civilian-based defense to improve security autonomy and sustainability in European defense. In 2025, she co-founded ONM, where she serves as Executive Director. With over 20 years of experience in research, editing, teaching, leadership, publishing, and civic education, she has edited multiple journals and published more than 40 articles on strategic nonviolent conflict. Amber speaks regularly on podcasts and at conferences and has taught at two French universities. She is editor of the forthcoming book, Ukrainian Freedom: Collective Agency in National Defense with Columbia University Press (November 2026).
At a time when pressure is mounting, there is increasing competition for militaries’ classic arsenals, and so unexamined sources of power in society, like the democracy arsenal, become more important.
ONM’s mission is to lead in stocking this second arsenal alongside other grassroots actors in France, Ukraine, Europe, and Francophone Africa. Our vision is for civilian agency to be fully integrated into Europe’s defence and security architecture, not treated as an afterthought to military planning or worse, left to spontaneity during crisis.
What is unarmed civilian-based defense?
The goal of this webinar is to explore nonmilitary power, a term which may baffle you at first, but if you persevere, you might learn something new about war and strategic foresight for Europe. We are glad you are here, but it is better to learn WITH Ukraine, not just ABOUT Ukraine.
The country is a living organism, fighting and adapting in real time, worth actively engaging with, not just observing. There are many constructive ways outside of the military ecosystem and without the exchange of money that allow us to cooperate with grassroots civil society and ordinary people who nonviolently struggle for freedom.
One central concept to define for this webinar is unarmed civilian-based defense (UCBD), best understood by what it is not.
It is not pacifism (an ideology).
It is not civil defense (institution-led emergency preparedness).
It is not total defense, which folds in armed resistance and citizen-soldiers alongside unarmed civil resistance.
It is not JUST civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) or helping the army.
And it is not a call for martyrdom, because it is not aspirational, as you’ll discover over the course of this webinar.
Unarmed civilian-based defense is none of these.
It IS… a very real path, taken by generations of Europeans before us in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium resisting Nazi aggression, and later in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and the Baltics resisting Soviet aggression. It’s often spontaneous at first, growing more coordinated over time, though always better prepared in advance (just like any armed campaign would be).
Its protagonists — families, neighbors, civil society, businesses, retirees, veterans, youth, students, and civil servants — aim to disrupt aggressors’ goals, complementing institutional defense, protecting communities, and building resilience against hybrid attacks, at far less cost than most kinetic activities.
UCBD is not a panacea, but we haven’t found a better way to mobilize a population toward national defense, engaging an aggressor where he holds no strategic advantage. As Machiavelli wrote, strong republics — democracies, in today’s language — are the hardest to subdue.