Christopher Bing, Joel Schectman

According to two sources, the government of Ukraine needs volunteers for its hacker underground in order to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure and carry out cyber spying operations against Russian troops.

Russian troops attacked Ukrainian cities on Thursday, prompting requests for volunteers to post on hacker forums. Residents fled Kyiv.

“Ukrainian cybercommunity! It is time to participate in cyber defense for our country,” reads the post. The request was made to hackers and cybersecurity specialists to send an application through Google (NASDAQ:). Docs. This will list their areas of expertise, like malware development and professional reference.

Yegor Aushev is the co-founder and CEO of a cybersecurity firm in Kyiv. Cyber Unit Technologies, which Aushev founded is well-known for its work with the Ukrainian government to defend critical infrastructure.

An additional person who was directly involved with the task confirmed that it came from the Defense Ministry Thursday morning.

Reps of the Ukraine Defense Ministry didn’t respond to my request for comment. An American defense attache to Ukraine said that he couldn’t confirm or denial information received from Telegram channels. This was in reference to the mobile messaging platform.

Aushev stated that the volunteers will be split into offensive and defensive cyber units. This unit will be used to protect infrastructure like power plants and water systems. Two million Ukrainians were affected by a cyberattack in 2015, which was widely blamed on Russia’s state hackers.

Aushev claimed that the offensive volunteer unit he’s organizing will help Ukraine’s military to conduct digital spy operations against invading Russian troops.

Aushev stated, “We have an Army inside our country.” “We must know their activities.”

Researchers at cybersecurity company ESET discovered that a new piece of malicious software had been found in Ukraine. It was able to attack hundreds of computers. Russia is suspected of hacking Ukraine, and many other countries. Reuters reported previously that the victims were government agencies as well as a financial institution.

Russia denies the allegation.

Aushev said that efforts to develop a cyber army force are late in the game.

According to the Washington Post, a Ukrainian security officer stated earlier in the month that there was no designated military cyber force. “It’s our task to create them this year,” he told the Washington Post.

Aushev was able to reach him late on Thursday night in Ukraine. He said he’d already received hundreds upon hundreds of candidates and that he would start vetting them all to verify they weren’t Russian agents.