No truce on Ukraine's hidden front

Telegraph

12-04-2025

The first time I met Stork, he was sawing off a foot. The second, bandaging a boneless shin. The third, this April, he was underground, watching security cameras, waiting for something to move.
He only sees the sun once or twice a day when he climbs the stairs from the basement where he sleeps and works. The building, once home to an ordinary Ukrainian family, now serves as a military field hospital near the country's northern border with Russia.
The battlefield paramedic's job is to treat the wounded that have been ferried in from the front in Vovchansk, a Ukrainian town just a few kilometres from Russia's Belgorod oblast, where President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed for the first time this month that Ukrainian troops have been active.
Stork's goal is simple: keep the wounded alive long enough to reach the next hospital.
Stork and his unit are a long way from the sofas of the Oval Office, the corridors of Brussels and the hotels of Riyadh, where talks on ending the war have taken place in recent months between US, Ukrainian and Russian delegations in recent months.
Russia has said it is willing to agree to a ceasefire, but has shown no sign of ending its onslaught. There are fears, meanwhile, that the Trump administration could force Ukraine into a deeply unfavourable deal, having already piled pressure on Ukraine to sue for peace by cutting off aid.
In the meantime, the war grinds on. Stork has grown numb to the blood of the wounded; their screams and the horrible silence that precedes their deaths. There's a predictability to it that he can handle, one that can't now be said of politics.
'I don't feel comfortable with the US any more. Not since the elections,' he said, filling out patient charts after an hour spent disinfecting wounds and dressing burns.
Oleh, the unit's lead surgeon, scoffed at the idea that Putin wants peace.
' Peace? What peace? ' he said, petting his dog. 'Putin has his plans for the invasion. He never changed them.'
He is the one who made the decision to relocate the operating theatre closer to the front line. It was taking too long for the wounded to reach the previous site, so Oleh gave the order – set up a new facility underground to keep his comrades alive.
He made that call in the autumn as Donald Trump moved closer to re-election, boasting he could end the war in 24 hours. Meanwhile, Mr Zelensky pushed his 10-point victory plan to his allies.
'Our president also said we'd liberate most of the occupied territories in 2023,' says Mykola, an anaesthetist in his fifties who has spent the past three years in uniform. 'And yet, here we are.'
Oleh used to work in a hospital in Kharkiv. Now he works with soldiers instead of civilians, in a narrow room heated by a wood stove.
Rest is precious and doesn't last long.
'Get up! We've got work!' shouts a voice between bunks. Doctors and paramedics spring from their mattresses and push aside the curtain that separates their makeshift dormitory from the operating room.
Caked in mud, three soldiers clamber out of a medevac vehicle wrapped in an anti-drone cage. Two are on their feet. The third, Andrii, lies motionless on a stretcher, his limbs, neck, and face burnt raw after flames swept through his trench.
Serhii, another soldier, looks down at his flayed, blistered hands. He opens his eyes wide, but his lips won't move. A yellow crucifix rests on his chest. When he believes painkillers are going to run out, he screams. The enemy is not what scares soldiers most. The unknown is.
Mykhailo, an artilleryman with the same brigade operating nearby on the front line, sits underground beside an old Soviet howitzer, waiting for the order to fire. He wears an American flag on his vest.
'It came with the backpack,' Mykhailo shrugs, lowering his head as his comrades snicker. Overhead, rats scurry across the roof, scratching at the plastic.
Still smiling, Anatoliy, the squad commander, turns back to a laptop, pointing to a cluster of trees on the screen. Where most would see mud and branches, he spots old enemy positions, tyre tracks, and weak points in the Russian trenches – no zoom needed.
'They're here to take this forest,' he mutters. 'How many men they've sent… it's a scary thought.'
He and his men, one of eight brigades redeployed to Ukraine's north-east to stop Moscow's offensive in May 2024, have spent over a year in this position. Putin's goal was to capture Vovchansk, advance towards Kharkiv and batter Ukraine's second-largest city with artillery.
It didn't work.
Nearly a year on, Russia doesn't fully control Vovchansk, a town with less than 20,000 residents before the full-scale invasion. Today, it lies in ruins, five kilometres from the Russian border.
'Kursk helped take the pressure off. August and September were really quiet,' says Anatoliy.
Still, he doesn't think it's time to counter-attack. Russia controls around 100 square kilometres of the Kharkiv region here. 'Better to keep defending,' he says. 'Attacking costs too many lives.'
Yet Kyiv recently opened a new front near Belgorod, not far from last summer's incursions into Kursk. In justifying the move, Mr Zelenksy said, 'The war must return to where it came from.'
Whether the aim is to buy time, tie down Kremlin forces or keep Putin away from the negotiating table, Moscow now faces hard choices.
On March 31, Russia announced a mobilisation wave for 160,000 more troops. But it's not just manpower they're short of.
'Since New Year, most of their assaults are on foot,' says Anatoliy. 'Armoured vehicles? You barely see them. They're just sent to die.'
He flicks through drone footage of Vovchansk, now a town reduced to rubble. On American support, and how it might affect their military capacity, Anatoliy stays cautious.
'I know they've sent a lot of weapons. But I've never seen any of it. Here, we fight with Soviet equipment.'
Yet they've held the line. Will the storm return here, or will they be sent to plug holes in another front?
None of the five soldiers in the dugout knows. In their minds, the only certainty is that no ceasefire will last. Even as a Ukrainian delegation prepares for a new Washington visit next week.
Wrapped in fresh bandages, Serhii asks for a cigarette with a gesture, just before the second evacuation begins.
His name is the only word he has spoken. He won't say more until reaching the hospital. The poor road conditions and thick mud prevent ambulances from reaching this forgotten place. Only buggies, armoured vehicles, and medical 4x4s take the risk.
Stork pushes the stretcher and checks the catheter before closing the medevac door. Serhii lies still, dazed by morphine and exhaustion. Within minutes he's asleep, rocked by the jolting ride. Last night's rain has started to dry, but the track remains slick.
Fog offers the driver some cover, but everyone in the vehicle knows that evacuating a wounded soldier in daylight is tempting fate. Until each side lays down its weapons, they have no choice.
This is war in Ukraine. Here, peace is just a rumour.