From the front line of the battle to save Kharkiv

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Svitlana Morenets has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Moonlight shines on the wings of the reconnaissance drone as it glides over the field. Within minutes, the Leleka – Ukrainian for ‘stork’ – crosses the border into Russia’s Belgorod region. The soldiers monitoring it wait in their car, hidden in the undergrowth. Soon the image on their laptop freezes: the Russians are jamming the signal. They manoeuvre the Leleka back and forth, eventually finding a gap in the enemy’s electronic defences. The drone is back in contact, sending footage of Russian roads and towns. The hunt for enemy troops begins.

Some 30,000 Russian soldiers are amassed north of Vovchansk, a Ukrainian border town that was attacked two months ago. It is now split in two, with Russian forces occupying one half but struggling to advance beyond the aggregate plant in the town centre. I’m with Ukraine’s 71st Jaeger Brigade’s drone unit, which is tasked with locating Russian weapons and vehicles before the army breaches the border. The Kharkiv region is Vladimir Putin’s second front. He has had mixed results so far, but a new push is still expected this summer.

‘Even more Russian soldiers arrived in recent weeks,’ says Noha, the commander of the drone unit. ‘They are regrouping for something larger. An order seems to have come to push us away from the border, so we wouldn’t hit there.’ Putin has said he is carving out a ‘buffer zone’ to protect Russia from Ukrainian attacks, but the real aim has been to extend the front line to stretch Ukraine’s resources. The threat of losing Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, meant elite units were redeployed to the north, away from Donbas in the east.