LAST MONTH Russia drove Ukrainian forces out of most of the territory in Russia’s Kursk region that they had seized the previous August. The Russians deployed their own elite brigades, North Korean troops and a new weapon—fibre-optic drones that are controlled by a long, lightweight filament rather than by radio signals, making them impossible to jam. Now the fighting has spilled back over the border into Ukraine. Settlements close to the frontier are being pummelled, and several thousand civilians have fled or been evacuated. Some Russian assault units have crossed the border—though so far, insists Volodymyr Artyukh, the head of Sumy province’s military administration, “they have been eliminated.”
Ukrainian troops still hold slivers of territory inside Russia. In a diversionary attack in the last week of March, they advanced over the border into the neighbouring Belgorod region. Russian forces are bombing the towns and villages inside Ukraine through which Ukrainian forces passed to get to Belgorod. To the east, meanwhile, in the Donbas region, the fighting continues. On April 8th Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said Ukrainian forces had captured two Chinese citizens fighting with the Russians—confirming months-old reports from other foreign prisoners of war of a Chinese presence. Mr Zelensky said he would raise the issue with China’s government.
Many of those fleeing the border regions near Kursk end up in Sumy, a modest city 23km south of the border with a prewar population of about 250,000. Nadia Gorbliuk, aged 64, was evacuated from the rural village of Uhroidy. She had not wanted to leave her livestock, she says, bursting into tears: as the bombs fell she thought: “This is my destiny, to die with my turkeys!” When soldiers ordered her to leave, she kissed the birds farewell. All nine of them, she has since heard, were evacuated to safety.
Russia tried and failed to seize Sumy in February 2022, at the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Within six weeks its forces had been driven out of the entire region. Now, says Mr Zelensky, Russia is preparing for a new offensive here. It is unclear whether that might entail a real effort to occupy the area, or simply a relentless series of attacks aimed at tying down Ukrainian troops and creating a buffer zone.
Access to the city is strictly controlled by the SBU, Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service. Beyond the checkpoints, new bunkers, trenches and defensive lines can be seen slicing across the fields which surround the city. Sumy itself is bustling: despite the increase in attacks, its population has grown since the war’s start, says Mr Artyukh. The number of displaced people arriving from border regions is double that of former residents who have left. He interrupts the conversation periodically to identify background noises: first the boom of something outgoing; then two low roars from Ukrainian jets overhead, one a Soviet-era MiG, the other an American-made F-16.
In the first three months of the year the Sumy region was hit by 8,925 drones, glide bombs and other missiles, up from 3,693 in the same period last year, says Mr Artyukh. Yet there is no sign of panic in the city. It is too well-defended for the Russians to take, says Yurii Butuzov, a military analyst. He thinks their current aim is to retake the hills along the Russian side of the border still occupied by Ukrainian forces.
Control of those hilltops would make it easier for them to use drones to try to establish a 10km-wide, Russian-controlled buffer zone inside Ukraine. That, says Mr Butuzov, would allow the Russians to redeploy most of the troops fighting here to eastern Donbas. Russia has officially annexed that region, but virtually no countries recognise its claim, and some of it remains under Ukrainian control. “Donbas is a strategic goal for Putin,” says Mr Butuzov.
It is unclear whether the traumatised evacuees from border towns and villages will ever return home. Ms Gorbliuk is now sleeping in a former clinic with other evacuees, cared for by Pluriton, an organisation which helps the displaced. It is run by Kateryna Arisoy, herself a refugee from Donbas. Many elderly evacuees whose lives revolved around their homes, gardens and animals find it impossible to adapt once uprooted, she says: they develop “health conditions, mental problems and die”.
Many in Sumy would welcome a ceasefire, but no one is counting on one. The residents are phlegmatic; the mood is that life must go on. The same holds for Kharkiv, the much bigger city to Sumy’s south-east. On a Saturday afternoon dozens of energetic pensioners bopped lustily to music in the city’s central Freedom Square. The dance event has gone on every weekend for more than a decade; it moved to the square after the park where it was previously held was bombed twice.
Further east, in a village between the Russian border and the frontline region of Kupiansk, soldiers from a drone unit known as Typhoon said things were quiet. No new Russian offensive was expected, and they were preparing to redeploy to Pokrovsk, a besieged town in Donbas. In the last month the unit has started using its own fibre-optic drones, says Mihailo, its commander—a couple of months after the Russians got them.
The drones will make it even harder for soldiers or vehicles to move along the front lines than it is now, says Mihailo. That means fewer soldiers are required to man positions. Where six months ago Ukraine’s forces worried that the enemy was slowly rolling them back, they now think that drones and well-prepared defensive positions can hold the Russians off. Indeed, Russian forces have made very little progress for well over two years. Whether a ceasefire deal will come is uncertain. Ukraine is relying on its own strengths. ■
