IT expert turned hacker - how a digital army is targeting key Russian sites over Ukraine
Ukrainians are doing whatever they can to defend themselves, reports ITV News Correspondent Romilly Weeks from Lviv
A Ukrainian tech expert turned hacker is part of an international digital army targeting Russian government sites to bolster the former Soviet state's fight against Moscow.
Sasha Ferens, who has been displaced from the capital Kyiv to the western city of Lviv, told ITV News how participating in the country's resistance against the Kremlin's attack is helping him and many others cope with "survivor's guilt".
The IT expert is part of a legion of hackers from around the world who are working to simultaneously flood key Russian government sites until they crash.
Among the sites targeted, the vast band of tech experts successfully took down Kremlin.ru - the official website of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
"We're all in this together," Sasha told ITV News. "It works when there's a massive amount of attackers, of users.
"In the first few days, most of the government sites had been taken down."
For Sasha, this is not only a way to bolster Ukraine's strength against the Kremlin, but it helps counteract the guilt felt for being one of the lucky ones in the war-torn country, where thousands have died and two million have fled.
"A lot of people, my friends, just everybody having this survivor's guilt and for people to be able to participate in something, it takes down the survivor's guilt and keeps their mental health in check," he said.
Although Lviv has not yet come under Russian attack - and there is currently no suggestion that it will - civilians are well-prepared and the nation's spirit of resistance is felt across the city.
In a garage where motorbikes are usually brought to be fixed, owner Serhiy is also doing what he can to help the fight by producing petrol bombs.
Alcohol may be banned in Lviv - but Molotov cocktails are not.
Serhiy's voice breaks as he explains: "Because we've decided to stay with our families, we have to find a way to protect them."
Meanwhile, a factory that used to make wood-burning stoves has shifted its efforts from heating homes to stopping them from burning down.
Working without pay and using donated metals, staff are making stinger chains to burst the tyres on Russian convoys and anti-tank barricades that now criss-cross the entrances to every Ukrainian town and city.
They are also producing stoves to send to Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline.
"It was a peaceful, normal factory - but we had to do something and this was better than waiting for things to hit us from the sky," says owner Oleg Shashkovskii.
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