Facing a random blizzard of shelling, soldiers on the frontline wonder if Russia is going to have a second crack at taking the north-eastern region
he enemy on the other side of the woods can be heard when the wind blows towards the deep Ukrainian trenches. Russian voices carry in the freezing cold air as do the growls of the tanks and the buzz of the kamikaze and reconnaissance drones.
Tkach is talking from a warren of trenches and machine gun posts in a position in south-east Sumy, 1,500 metres from the official Russian-Ukrainian border. His words are punctuated, now and again, by the gentle crump of the sound of artillery shelling somewhere further along the defensive line.“It is only small now,” he says reassuringly. The Russians have been throwing everything over here, the soldiers say.
A band of Russian saboteurs was caught last week trying to cross over the border for purposes unknown. They fled under fire. Two weeks ago, an assault helicopter fired seven rockets at targets just 800 metres from this position. “And rockets from a Grad system hit that hill over there,” says Artem Volynko, 25 a senior lieutenant in the state border guard, pointing to an entirely unpopulated and unremarkable elevation.
Volynko was on the frontline when they came the first time. He was manning a checkpoint with 10 others in the village of Velyka Pysarivka, not far from these trenches, and previously best known for being the site of the murder 36 of its residents during the Nazi occupation in 1941.“The Russians started hitting our checkpoint with small arms but we couldn’t see them in the dark, it was chaotic fire,” he recalls. “They also used under barrel grenade launchers.
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