THE BOMBARDMENT began just after 4am on February 24th 2022. For the half-dozen border guards at the Vilcha checkpoint, 150km north of Kyiv, the odds of surviving were not good. Rockets smashed their corrugated-iron booths to pieces in an instant. Only quick thinking from Senior Lieutenant Sashko “Buddy” Suprun saved the unit from annihilation. He shouted to drop back, and the men watched the destruction from dug-outs a few metres away. Armed with little more than assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and a machine gun, they braced for the next attack: the 700-vehicle-strong armoured column heading their way.
The guards were a close-knit family. For years the men and women of the unit lived side by side in the village, on the edge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They were friends, spouses, godparents to each others’ children. “Baloo”, the 23-year-old unit commander, had just celebrated the birth of his first child. Lieutenant Suprun, then 31, was a passionate cook who dreamed of opening a restaurant. “Hassid”, 35, who drove the armoured personnel carrier, had fought the Russians in several tours in occupied Donbas since 2014. Signalman “Koshyk,” 33, the most seasoned, had served at Vilcha on and off since 2010.
Read more of our recent coverage of theUkraine war
That winter morning changed their lives for ever. “Life turned upside down,” says Baloo. “Before, I had plans, I had hopes.” Across the country, Ukraine’s border service paid the initial price of Russia’s invasion. On the first day 20 personnel were killed, 59 injured and 85 taken prisoner. At the time, it was unclear what sort of country would survive Russia’s aggression. That question remains, even if Vladimir Putin is far from his main objective of destroying Ukrainian statehood.
In Vilcha the tension had been building for weeks. The border guards knew what was happening on the other side of the border thanks to Ukrainian and Belarusian lorry drivers, who passed on dashcam footage showing the Russian build-up. They knew almost immediately when the first transporters with tanks arrived in January, and where they were hiding in the Belarusian forest. Initially they dared hope that the armed forces would leave after completing exercises, but by February 23rd they had few illusions. In the morning they got intelligence that the Russians were painting tactical markings on vehicles and guns. In the evening Ukraine’s cabinet ordered the border crossings closed at 8pm. The guards drank tea and began a sleepless night. “All you can do is think about your family,” says Signalman Koshyk.
Commander Baloo knew his unit could not stop the enormous Russian column. Instead he planned to slow it enough to be engaged by army units 20km down the road: “We knew the terrain better than they did.” Bridges were mined and ambushes laid. On the morning of February 24th, during a break in the shelling, the border guards retreated to higher positions near the river Uzh. It was like a slow-motion movie, says Hassid, the last to leave in his armoured personnel carrier, two shells exploding “right in front of my bonnet”. As the Russians drove onto the bridge over the Uzh, Ukrainian forces blew it up. That stopped the column—for a while. The Vilcha guards scampered out on small side roads. Miraculously, all emerged alive.
Today, the unit members are scattered across the country. Most of the guards are deployed in the hottest zones of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Sumy regions. Commander Baloo is part of an elite counter-espionage unit. “I can’t say much more about my work, other than that I’m now all about hunting enemies close to home,” he says. Koshyk, who transferred to another secret unit, is operating “somewhere on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border”. Hassid, who took part in several campaigns in eastern Ukraine, is now part of the garrison defending Kramatorsk in Donbas.
As the war nears its fifth year, Ukraine is in a stronger position than many thought possible in those first days. Russia no longer risks conquering Kyiv. Its assault was driven out by a patchwork of guerrilla-like defenders. Later in 2022 Ukraine pushed the Russians back in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions. Hopes for a decisive victory ended with a failed counter-offensive in 2023. But Ukraine has stayed alive against an adversary with far more resources—and in a new high-tech war nobody planned for. “Back in 2022 the scary thing was artillery,” says Baloo. “By the end of 2023 we’d made it all about drones.” In December and January drone operators claimed to have killed or seriously wounded a staggering 65,000 Russian soldiers.
Hard road ahead
Ukraine has its own problems. Conscripting soldiers is getting harder and requires more compulsion. The desertion rate among new recruits is above 30%. Those serving are kept on longer without rotation. They are exhausted, and resent being kept from their families. “My kid is now three years old, but I’ve seen only a few months of that,” says Hassid.
Meanwhile, Russia’s aerial attacks on energy infrastructure have crippled the economy. A vast corruption scandal, and the impossibility of elections during wartime, are fracturing political unity. President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose brave decision to stay in Kyiv helped give Ukraine its chance, is no longer the unassailable leader he once was. Valery Zaluzhny, a popular former top general, now ambassador to Britain, waits in the wings. On February 18th he spoke publicly for the first time of the disagreements that led to his dismissal in 2024.
A peace process is under way and might yet stop the fighting, at least for a while. But it is steered by an unreliable, often hostile American president. Any settlement will include territorial concessions that Ukraine would once have rejected; that risks weakening national unity. “I don’t want to give up our territory,” says Commander Baloo, but “Russia is simply much bigger than us.” He does not envy the politicians who have to make such choices.
As for American or European promises to protect Ukraine should Russia violate a deal, the border guards say February 24th taught them a lesson: the only security guarantee worth anything is your own guns. “God forbid you ever face what we did,” says Koshyk. “But if you do, remember it’s on you. Save yourself. Save your family. And save your colleagues. Because no one else will do it for you.”
For the Vilcha guards, staying in touch is hard, though they manage phone calls and the occasional meeting. After exchanging news of spouses and children, the talk invariably returns to “Buddy” Suprun, whose quick thinking kept his men alive. Suprun went on to fight in various theatres in eastern Ukraine. His journey ended near Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region, killed by an enemy mine on July 29th 2024, as the Ukrainians attempted to expel yet another Russian incursion. His widow Maria, now also a border guard, says she keeps his memory alive for their son, four months old when his father died. At bedtime “I try to fill in the gaps,” she says. “I tell him his daddy is still protecting him up there, from the sky.”
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