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In an underground command post in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian soldier peered at a map. Russian positions were marked in red. A year ago enemy troops were at least 35 miles (60km) away from the administrative border between Donetsk oblast and the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Now they were on the doorstep: a mere 5 miles away.
“The situation is pretty bad,” Valerii – call-sign “Oves” – admitted, sitting in front of a bank of screens showing live footage from the battlefield. Reconnaissance drones zoomed in on Russian positions under a snowy tree-line. “If a mouse moves, we can see it,” he said. His brigade, the 110th, spent a year and a half defending the eastern city of Avdiivka. It fell in February 2024 after a long and brutal siege.
Russian troops in the summer then swallowed up the brigade’s next position in the town of Ocheretnye, west of Avdiivka. Vladimir Putin’s ground forces have in the months since been moving at their quickest rate since 2022, advancing across a frosty landscape of slag-heaps, mining towns and villages. Their tactics are familiar: destroy and occupy.
“We have seen this big Russian wave. They have never gone forward this quickly before,” Valerii said. “They take terrible losses. But their human resources are unlimited.” His mechanised units – equipped with Soviet-era 152mm howitzers – are defending the southern town of Velyka Novosilka as the Russians try to encircle it.
In the past few days, Russian scouting parties have infiltrated the nearby settlements of Neskuchne and Novyi Komar. Fierce fighting rages. “During the day we hit them with artillery. At night the foxes and dogs eat their remains,” the commander Andrii Hrebeniuk, a sergeant major, said, adding: “We’ve recovered psychotropic drugs from Russian prisoners. They are dosed up to reduce fear before kamikaze missions.”
Putin’s strategic goal is to take full control of Donetsk oblast, which he “annexed” in 2022. He also claims Ukraine’s Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces. Russian troops are closing in on Dnipropetrovsk oblast for the first time in the more than a decade of war that began with Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and covert semi-takeover of the eastern Donbas region.
For now, Russian forces are not trying to storm the strategic city of Pokrovsk. Instead, they are bypassing it and rolling through small villages to the south with the aim of cutting Ukraine’s logistical supply routes. The Russians have fire control on the road leading to Kostyantynivka and the key garrison cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, to the north. In the other direction they have also cut the T0406 highway linking Pokrovsk with the town of Mezhova.
Mezhova is in Dnipropetrovsk oblast, just across the administrative border from tDonetsk. At a colourful roadside boundary marker, Ukrainian soldiers stop to take photographs alongside blue and yellow flags, regimental badges and a white virgin Mary statue wearing an army fleece. “We believe in our armed forces. The enemy won’t come here,” one soldier, Nataliia, declared optimistically, as she posed for a selfie.
In reality it seems unlikely Russian tanks will halt at the boundary between the two oblasts. “They won’t stop. If they are successful they will broaden their attack. If it were me I would carry on,” Hrebeniuk predicted. Ukraine urgently needed more western military help: armoured vehicles, artillery shells, aviation, he said. He warned that if it the country did not get it the Russians would eventually threaten Dnipro, the country’s fourth-biggest city and a major defence-industrial hub.
Reaching the boundary line would be a significant blow to Kyiv and an existential threat to Mezhova and the other once-peaceful settlements along it. Authorities in the 20,000-strong population – including 5,000 displaced by fighting farther east – have not yet issued evacuation orders for families with school-age children, but some residents have already left as the Russians creep closer.
Yevhen Khrypun, the editor of the local Mezhivskyi Merydian newspaper, said two of his colleagues departed in recent months, leaving just him and one reporter. The title has appeared every week since 1930. “We’ve never missed an edition. I hope we can celebrate our 95th anniversary in May,” he said, adding: “We don’t want to be the next Pokrovsk.”
The mayor, Volodymyr Zrazhevsky, said he spent the festive period reassuring anxious residents. He visited the town’s Christmas tree with his four-year-old grandson Lev. “My inner voice tells me the Russians will stop. Everything will be OK,” he said. “There will be a buffer zone. Maybe we will find ourselves in a grey area with international peacekeepers. I don’t want to think about other scenarios.”
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Donald Trump’s return to the White House next week has prompted hopes that a negotiated settlement to the war could be in sight. Putin, however, has shown little interest in a deal at a time when his forces are making rapid progress. A peacekeeping force is being discussed in European capitals but if it does ever arrive, it may be too late to save Mezhova.
The town has not yet suffered the fate of Bakhmut or other urban areas levelled by Russian glide bombs but it has already experienced tragedy and loss. On Saturday, the mayor and the editor attended the town’s 54th military funeral. The latest local soldier to be killed in battle was 30-year-old Andriy Zakhary. He disappeared in November 2023 near Ocheretyne but his remains were only recently identified.
A white transit van carrying Zakhary’s coffin drove up to his home in the village of Novotroitske. Residents kneeled and threw red carnations in its path. Zakhary’s mother, Svitlana, emerged into a muddy street and howled. A priest said prayers, as relatives supported a tottering Svitlana. Mourners followed the cortege to the village cemetery as it drizzled.
Standing in front of a newly dug grave, the mayor hailed Zakhary as a hero who had sacrificed his life for his country. “Heroes live in our memory for ever,” he said. “He believed in our victory.” A framed photo with a black sash was placed on his coffin. It showed a confident young man standing under a green canopy. Three soldiers fired a salute. The family threw earth into the plot. Dogs yapped. Friends deposited blue and yellow wreathes.
Khrypun conceded that this was a bleak moment in history. The area along the Vovcha River was once inhabited by nomadic Scythians. In the mid-16th century Zaporizhzhia Cossacks – military forerunners of modern Ukraine – settled in winter villages. They farmed, fished and hunted. Russia now threatens to incorporate the town into its grim new-old empire.
“Yes, the west gives us weapons. But we are standing alone against the 21st-century equivalent of Hitler. We are several times smaller than our neighbour. If Ukraine falls, Putin will gobble up somewhere else,” the editor said. What was he hoping for? He replied: “Over new year we raised a toast. Our deepest wish is to celebrate the next new year alive and in our homes.”
