Oleksii Kharkivskyi, head of the Vovchansk patrol police, in his police car at an undisclosed location in Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine, May 26.
Laurel Chor for NPR
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Laurel Chor for NPR
KHARKIV REGION, Ukraine — For the past 10 weeks, a battle has raged over a small border town just five miles from Russia.
The fact that Russia invaded Vovchansk was no surprise; Russian troops had massed along the border with northeastern Ukraine while under-equipped and overstretched Ukrainian troops awaited military aid from the United States and its Western allies.
For Oleksii Kharkivskyi, head of the city’s police patrol, this looks like a concrete example of what happens without sufficient help.
“We tried to prepare,” he said, “but the Russians came in and dropped a lot of bombs.”
Kharkivskyi grew up in Vovchansk, fishing in the wooded ponds and hiking along the Vovcha River that runs through the town. He helped evacuate his neighbors through those woods when Russian forces occupied Vovchansk in February 2022. A few months later, Ukraine recaptured the town, but only a quarter of its 18,000 residents returned. They faced daily Russian shelling.
“As a police force, we were there to try to restore people’s confidence so that they would stay,” Kharkivskyi said. “I got to know everyone personally.”
When the Russians invaded again in early May, he found himself evacuating his neighbors, mostly elderly people who were crying as they left everything behind. He filmed the evacuations and posted the videos on Facebook.
“I wanted to show everyone what it looks like when a city has no means of defending itself,” he said.
Oleksii Kharkivskyi, the head of the Vovchansk patrol police, shows videos he filmed during the evacuations of civilians from Vovchansk in Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine.
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Serhii Kuzan, who heads the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, a kyiv-based defense think tank, said delays in military aid from the United States and Europe have encouraged Russia to deploy troops along Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia.
He said the offensive began to stall only after aid began arriving and the United States gave Ukraine permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons to strike limited military targets in Russia.
“Ukrainian intelligence warned about Russian plans in the northeast,” Kuzan said. “The lack of ammunition and resources led to a loss of valuable time.”
Outgunned on the front line
Deep in the woods, not far from Vovchansk, the command center of one of the battalions of the 57th Separate Motorized Brigade has set up a temporary base.
Battalion commander Yuri Lunyov said that at the beginning of the offensive, supply routes to the front line were blocked by Russian fighter jets that constantly dropped guided bombs in and around the city. These bombs have retractable wings and a satellite navigation system.
Yuri Lunyov, commander of the 2nd Rifle Battalion of the 57th Brigade, poses for a portrait in front of a command center near Vovchansk on May 29.
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Scenes inside the command center of an artillery unit of the 57th Brigade in the Kharkiv region on May 29.
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A soldier from the brigade, Rodion, who did not give his last name for security reasons, was watching a screen in late May showing Russian and Ukrainian soldiers fighting on the streets of Vovchansk.
“We are rationing ammunition,” he said. “But the Russians have the resources to drop countless bombs, even on very small targets, like three soldiers.”
Rodion, a soldier of the 57th Brigade, at the command center of an artillery unit in the Kharkiv region on May 29.
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Guided bombs remains a challenge But battalion commander Lunyov said the Russians appeared to be slowing down after the United States allowed Ukraine to use American weapons to strike military targets in Russia. Those strikes, he said, “appear to have damaged supply chains and equipment in Russia.”
However, Russia continues to send waves and waves of infantry. The brigade’s artillery unit tries to hold them back.
Deeper into the woods, along a dirt road, the unit’s commander, Nur, who declined to give his full name for similar security reasons, said the unit was short on long-range shells.
“If we had had these weapons,” he said, “we could have fired on the Russian troops before they reached Vovchansk.”
Nur, commander of the 57th Brigade’s artillery unit, poses for a portrait at a command center in the Kharkiv region on May 29.
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Out of time
Some Western military aid has now reached the front line. It has allowed Ukrainian troops to halt the Russian advance. But there is little left of the city except ruins and rubble.
Dozens of people remain in Vovchansk, hiding in basements as Russian troops continue to attack the town. Earlier this month, soldiers and local police evacuated three children.
Evacuations are dangerous. In late May, hundreds of people mourned the death of a police officer killed by a Russian drone during an evacuation. The ceremony took place in a basement about 50 kilometers from Vovchansk, in the city of Kharkiv. Outside, air raid sirens blared.
Vovchansk’s wartime administrator, Tamaz Gambarshvili, limped as he walked behind the coffin.
“The enemy hit a place where we had set up a command post for the evacuation,” he said. “I was wounded by a piece of shrapnel in my left thigh.”
Gambarshvili was tasked with rehousing the evacuees from Vovchansk. Many of them ended up in a student residence, now empty because of the war.
Smoke is seen on the horizon in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine on May 29.
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Liudmyla Kuznetsova, a 79-year-old retired accountant at a bread factory, said she and her family were among the last to leave Vovchansk.
“Whenever the doors and windows of our house were torn off, we would just fix them,” she said.
But she was short of supplies and Vovchansk was running out of time.
She left at night with only the clothes she was wearing as her hometown burned.
