Ukraine: Not Quiet on the Eastern Front
Kupiansk – Ukraine is in the middle of a really tough winter. The war is going badly, with a Russian offensive that began in May 2024 making slow but steady progress, eating into Ukrainian territory in the east.
I’m back in Kupiansk with volunteers from the Roza Na Ruke (Rose on Hand) team evacuating people from the front line, about two hours away from Kharkiv city. I’ve been to Kupiansk city many times over the last 18 months, joining teams bringing humanitarian and medical aid to civilians, or getting the vulnerable out.
The winter cold is biting hard here now, with the acres of summer sunflowers frozen and frosted over. Russian soldiers are on the outskirts of the city, including the notorious Storm Z troops, recruited from Russia’s prisons and regarded as the most expendable of their soldiers.
But some civilians still stay here despite the almost constant bombardments. Many want to leave, and like Lyudmila, call a hotline to say they want to be rescued. Ihor and I drive into the city fast, through the bombed-out streets, to meet her at her house. She is ready to go when we arrive at 12:30pm, already standing in her boots and coat in the snow outside her front door, and we take her out of the immediate danger in Kupiansk to the relative safety of relatives in Kharkiv city.
Lyudmila leaves behind her home in a city that’s largely destroyed: the streets are deserted, the roads torn up by heavy military vehicles, and the sound and vibrations of explosions almost constant.
Russia is throwing huge numbers of soldiers into the battle for Kupiansk. Its troop losses here and along the entire front are reported to be immense, with the British Ministry of Defence estimating that in May 2024 Russia was sustaining 1200 casualties a day. But the advances continue, and in November 2024 Russian forces took more Ukrainian territory than in any month since September 2022.
In October I was in Povrovsk in the Donetsk region with Roza Na Ruke volunteers to evacuate civilians stranded in surrounding areas on the front line. In one day, we rescued 11 people, mostly elderly, from communities under fire. Those villages – Kurakhove, Selydove, Kurakhivka, and Hirnyk – have now all been overrun by Russian soldiers and are under occupation.
On the Ukrainian side, there is a shortage of soldiers to defend Pokrovsk, Kupiansk, and other key points along the 600-mile-long frontline, and efforts to mobilize more men into the army are increasingly frenetic.
A recruitment drive that started in April now means any man aged between 25 and 60 without a valid exemption can be taken into the military. In a move believed to have strained relations between Kyiv and Washington, the Biden administration has reportedly pressed the Ukrainian authorities to go even further, and to lower the minimum age to 18.
Mobilization units made up of soldiers and police charged with finding men and taking them to the army roam the streets of Ukraine’s cities. In Kharkiv and elsewhere they stop men in the subway, on the street, and at road blocks, taking them from cafes and restaurants straight to the recruiting centers.
Meanwhile, the fight for Kupiansk continues. Thousands of people remain. Many, like Lyudmila, want to leave and have to rely on cars and vans driven by volunteer rescue teams to get them out. But in a controversial move, the authorities are taking volunteers doing these lifesaving evacuations under fire and putting them into the army.
I’ve witnessed firsthand the work of the Roza Na Ruke evacuation team at different points along hundreds of miles of the eastern front and joined them in driving into extreme danger to take vulnerable people away from the very front line. I know the risks they are prepared to take to help others. One of the team, Tigran Galustyan, was killed by a Russian drone attack near Pokrovsk in October while driving to evacuate civilians.
Roza Na Ruke estimates they have rescued 14,000 people from communities under fire since 2022, yet their volunteers are being conscripted into the military, leaving no one else to do this work.
If civilians are to be rescued from the danger of being stuck on the front line, Ukraine’s authorities should stop forcibly conscripting these volunteer humanitarian activists into the army.
