Yellow Ribbon is Ukraine’s leading non-violent resistance group. It is dedicated to peacefully resisting Russian occupation wherever it goes, and in 2022, was one of four Ukrainian groups honored with the European Parliament’s Andrei Sakharov Prize for “For Freedom of Thought” – the EU’s main award for the defense of Human Rights.
What distinguishes Yellow Ribbon from traditional nonviolent resistance movements is its emphasis on the digital. The group has activists across the occupied territories who stay connected via a chatbot plugin on the group’s Telegram channel. The system enables Yellow Ribbon to share the materials and techniques necessary for the resistance to make its activities visible in the real world of the occupation, while safeguarding anonymity.
Yellow Ribbon has helped change the nature of nonviolent resistance movements. In the past these tended to center on a single, charismatic figure, now it is a horizontal structure united around an idea.
Instead, Yellow Ribbon, with its army of activists across occupied Ukraine, creates impact through a shared disgust at what Russia is doing. Its great strength lies in its digitally diffuse activism – which makes stopping it that much harder for the Russians.
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