Cross-border skirmishes raise fears for Ukrainian villagers

The forests around Vovchansk were on fire, white smoke drifting through the pines and billowing above the treetops where artillery shells had started the fire.

Vovchansk and the other towns and villages along Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia have been living under shellfire from Russian troops across the border for months. But in the past five days, attacks have exploded with sudden ferocity after groups of exiled Russian fighters – aligned with Ukraine against the Russian government – ​​attacked several settlements in Russia, and Russian troops responded with violence.

In the southeast, Ukraine’s leaders faced an unfolding catastrophe on Wednesday, as rising waters from a destroyed dam in the Dnipro River forced thousands of evacuations. But at the northern border, fear centered on ongoing cross-border hostilities, with both sides trading heavy volleys of artillery shells this week..

Vovchansk, two and a half miles from the Russian border, is largely a ghost town. There are few cars on the road except military and police vehicles. Barely 1,000 people are left after months of shelling that damaged many residential homes and central buildings, with most hiding indoors.

“In these four days, we can’t understand what’s going on,” says Iryna, who lives in the city with her two daughters and six dogs. “Drones fly all the time.” As with many civilians in front-line areas in Ukraine, her last name is not listed for security reasons.

As she spoke, there was the deep rumble of an artillery shell exploding on the edge of town, followed by a few sharp bursts of artillery.

Her daughters, who recently returned from Russia, are getting used to the shelling, she said. They care for a growing collection of dogs that they took in after being abandoned by neighbors who moved out.

In Vovchansk, Ukrainian officials declined to comment on the recent military operation. But they have said Ukraine needs to push Russian troops away from the border to reduce shellfire in the wider region – suggesting tacit support.

“They are terrorizing the people,” said Tamaz Gambarashvili, the head of the civil-military administration in Vovchansk.

The city was occupied by Russian troops for seven months and then, after a major counter-offensive in Ukraine in September forced the Russians to withdraw, the inhabitants suffered a grim winter. Russia unleashed a barrage of daily artillery and mortar attacks as part of its winter offensive in eastern Ukraine.

The latest fighting interrupted electricity and telephone services, adding to the people’s problems. The local authorities have focused on providing food and other supplies, including building materials for damaged homes, to the remaining population.

Two villages even closer to the border than Vovchansk are almost deserted, the police chief said. Only two residents still live in one of the villages.

The head of the local education department, Lyudmila Madiani, said it was providing online classes to 600 children still in the district, but had to suspend them over the past week because the internet was down. Only four of the district’s 21 schools survived the war undamaged, she said.

The attack on the Russian cities of Shebekino and Novaya Tavolzhanka led to the evacuation of several thousand residents of the area and pushed Russian troops back from the border so that close-range mortar teams are no longer active, said Mr. Gambarashvili.

“Now it’s not just us who are suffering,” he said. “We hear that they are also suffering.”

Two anti-Kremlin groups, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Free Russia Legion have claimed responsibility for several attacks across the border in recent weeks and have caused a storm of publicity. They have made it a point to film and distribute videos announcing their presence.

Their main aim was to create a distraction and draw Russian troops away from the front in Ukraine, as well as to create a demilitarized buffer zone along the border, Aleksandr Fortuna, the chief of staff of the Russian Volunteer Corps, said in an interview via Zoom on Tuesday. He said the military operation was still going on and their fighters had managed to take part of the city of Shebekino.

Russian military bloggers have criticized Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine’s border towns, saying continued control of the settlements would have provided protection against the recent incursions. Ukrainian officials say it would be better if Russian troops were pushed back further from the border and a buffer zone was established in Russia.

“There is only one solution: a 100-kilometer demilitarized zone,” said Maksym Stetsyna, the burly police chief, who wore body armor and a baseball cap.

During a tour of the city, Oleksiy Kharkivsky, chief of the patrol police, pointed out a house that was still smoldering; shells had hit and set it on fire over the weekend. He said he went to each firing site to see if there were any casualties.

“Normally we are the first on site,” he says. “We get a call, put on our body armor and go.”

Incendiary bombs burned houses in a residential area early Sunday morning and two grandmothers died in artillery strikes around the same time, said Ihor Kharchenko, chief of investigations of the Vovchansk regional police.

“Last week they fired with everything they had,” he said of the Russians. “They are firing artillery and incendiary bombs. They have multiple missile launchers like us and sometimes a tank jumps out and fires and then goes back and hides.”

Hidden in the countryside on the outskirts of Vovchansk, a multiple missile launcher roared into action as he spoke, sending a salvo of some 40 missiles toward Russia. “That’s our artillery going out,” he said.

Although the anti-Kremlin groups, made up of Russians, have claimed responsibility for the attacks in Russia, there are signs that Ukrainian troops have also been part of the attack, including long-range artillery. During an hours-long visit to Vovchansk on Monday, there appeared to be more outgoing Ukrainian artillery fire than incoming Russian fire. Mr Fortuna said the equipment and weapons belonged to his force.

Iryna, the mother of two, said she was concerned about the increase in Ukrainian armor and troops arriving in the city. A group had parked under the trees across the street, she said.

“The border is very close,” Iryna said. “We know when our guys are shooting at them, we’re waiting for the answer.”