After two years on the front line of Ukraine’s war, residents of the Russian border town of Vovchansk have a generous definition of what counts as peace and quiet. Cross-border skirmishes have been part of life here ever since the invasion started – so much so that most townsfolk barely flinch at the sound of artillery salvoes.
Since Friday, however, what is normally shrugged off as background noise has become a deafening thunder as Russian forces launch a renewed ground offensive into Ukraine’s north-east.
And on Saturday night, it finally became too much for 51-year-old Olena when a Russian shell destroyed a neighbour’s home and tore the roof off her own house.
Clutching a bag of belongings and her sausage dog, she left her home and fled in an evacuation convoy organised on Sunday by police and civilian volunteers. A salvo of incoming Russian shells bade her goodbye.
“The situation is absolutely f—ed, we had glide bombs coming in really close everywhere, and loads of Russian drones flying over,” she told The Telegraph, referring to one of Russia’s deadly new weapons. “It has always been pretty crazy around here anyway, but nothing like as crazy as it is now – before, the Russians would at least give us a bit of a break between shelling.”
Olena is among an estimated 4,000 residents to flee Vovchansk and nearby villages since the Russian offensive began just after midnight on Thursday. On Sunday night, troops who brought a wounded comrade to a hospital in a nearby town said there was “heavy fighting” in Vovchansk’s suburbs, with Russian troops making constant pushes.
“Most of it is infantry attacks,” said a sergeant call-signed “Senior”, whose wounded comrade had a gunshot wound to the arm. “The situation is okay, we are defending our country and no matter what they do, we can hold them off.”
That was not the view on Sunday of the Russian defence ministry, which claimed that its forces had “advanced deeply into the enemy defences”, attacking not only Vovchansk but capturing a handful of villages that lie around 15 miles further east.
It remains unclear at present whether the Russian offensive is part of a renewed drive towards Kharkiv, the north-east regional capital, or simply a distraction exercise to force Ukraine to divert troops from the Donbas front line further south.
Either way, the renewed fighting brought a sense of weary deja vu to the residents of Vovchansk, a town of 17,000 that spent six months under Russian occupation when Kremlin troops first rolled across Ukraine’s north-east border in early 2022. Vovchansk was retaken by Kyiv that autumn, when a counter-offensive recaptured thousands of square miles of the north-east. But with Russian forces simply having to retreat across the border three miles away, the threat of reoccupation has never gone away.
Indeed, to an outsider, it can seem remarkable that anyone still chooses to live in Vovchansk at all. Parts of it are already half-flattened from the past two years of conflict, and in the fields and pine forests, grinning red skull signs warn of minefields. The 3,000-odd residents who have stuck it out here have done so either out of patriotism, bloody-minded stubbornness, or simply because they have nowhere else to go.
With some residents now trapped by the recent fighting, local evacuation teams have been making mercy dashes to pluck them out – the emphasis being very much on the “dash”.
“The Russian drones can fly at about 50mph, so try to keep to at least 60mph or more as we drive in,” one policeman told The Telegraph as we departed for Vovchansk from a muster point ten miles south.
The bomb-cratered country lane leading to the town wound through swathes of forest set ablaze by shelling. In Vovchansk itself, which was near-deserted, palls of black smoke rose on the skyline, and the sound of artillery was constant.
Dispensing with pleasantries, the evacuation team hammered on Olena’s door and that of another resident, yelling at them to leap into the waiting vehicles. Several times the team took cover as incoming shells whistled overhead, while at one point there was the high-pitched buzz of a drone.
“It’s a dangerous job that we do but you get used to it after a few missions,” said Yarik, one of the volunteers.
Back at the muster point, evacuated residents were loaded into buses and driven to Kharkiv, either to stay with relatives or in emergency accommodation.
“It has been crazy, just non-stop shelling for three days,” said Oksana Velychko, 45, another evacuee, as she hugged her tearful daughter Kristina, 10. “It was just unbearable for the kids – lots of houses wrecked, and all the forests burning. We’re off to Kharkiv now where hopefully the social workers will find us somewhere to stay. God forbid the Russians don’t start attacking Kharkiv too, because we need some peace.”
Supervising the evacuation attempts on Sunday was a tired-looking Tamaz Hambarashvili, the head of the Vovchansk military administration. He said that since Friday, three civilians had been killed and at least seven injured, with another reported missing.
“We’ve evacuated 600 people, although many others have just left in their own cars,” he told The Telegraph in between fielding constant mobile phone calls. “Even before now, this area was getting heavily shelled every day, but now it’s just massive.”
The new Russian offensive piles yet more pressure on Ukraine after nine months in which Kyiv’s progress in the ground war has faltered. Kremlin forces are also mounting a separate push in the eastern Donbas region, seeking to maximise gains before Ukraine gets renewed US weapons supplies.
The north-east push is also a test for Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, who took over from Valery Zaluzhny earlier this year. General Syrsky personally oversaw the original counter-offensive that recaptured swathes of the north-east in autumn 2022, and will not wish to see his work unravelled.
On Sunday he said that the Russian attacks had been halted in their tracks, but conceded that the situation had “deteriorated significantly”.
One other reason for the Kremlin’s push may be to establish a “grey zone” along the north-east border to stop Ukrainian incursions into Russia’s neighbouring Belgorod region. On Sunday, Russian officials said that seven people were killed and 17 other injured, including two children, in a Ukrainian missile in Belgorod city.
In a sign that not all Ukrainian troops have confidence in their high command, one soldier gave an on-the-record interview to the BBC on Sunday to protest that there had been no proper defences around Vovchansk when the Russians had attacked.
“There was no first line of defence,” said Denys Yaroslavskyi, a reconnaissance leader. “The Russians just walked in.”
He added: “When we were fighting back for this territory in 2022, we lost thousands of people. And now, because someone didn’t build fortifications, we’re losing people again.”
As of now, life across most of the rest of north-east Ukraine remains relatively calm: in Kharkiv on Sunday night, bars and restaurants were still busy. Outside the city, however, bulldozers are digging fresh defensive trenches – a sign that the Russians previously routed by General Syrsky are once again looming nearer.
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