Not for the first time on this journey, Vasil takes one hand from the steering wheel and crosses himself. ‘To give ourselves a chance, we should be driving at 80 kilometres an hour here,’ he explains. ‘But, as you can see, that’s not possible.’
Instead, the little van in which we are travelling is obliged to zig-zag at not much more than walking pace along this snow and ice-covered road scarred by potholes and shell craters.
For the last 25 minutes we’ve been traversing a vast, wintry and otherwise deserted steppe, under a sky dominated by Russian attack drones and other airborne threats. Our destination is the artillery and glide-bomb battered frontier village of Odnorobivka. Only four miles beyond that lies Russia itself.
Stacked in the back of Vasil Myroshnyk’s van is what might seem a strange or insufficient reason for running this nerve-shredding gauntlet; a few dozen copies of this week’s print edition of the Bohodukhiv Newsletter.
We are about to make the latest delivery on what is surely a contender for the world’s most dangerous newspaper round.
‘In wartime, people thirst for news,’ says Vasil, who is the editor as well as paperboy. On one recent delivery run, the tyres of his (hastily abandoned) van were shredded by a rocket from a Russian helicopter gunship. Tomorrow will be his 65th birthday. Yet still he carries on. ‘People want to know, more than ever, what has happened and what could follow.
’Throughout the journey Vasil doesn’t stop talking. I suspect he is naturally garrulous but there is also a nervous tension behind his flow of words. At one particularly exposed point he exclaims: ‘Adrenalin, right? F***! I love the feeling!’ He then adds, less ebulliently: ‘But it’s okay – everything will be fine… God willing.
’Over the past three years, Ukraine has shown itself to be as bloody-minded and defiant as the remarkable Vasil. It continues to fight against a superpower invader in a war in which hundreds of thousands of its citizens have already been killed or wounded and whole cities laid waste. Against the odds, most of the country remains unoccupied.
Newspaper editor and paper boy Vasil Myroshnyk on the most dangerous paper round in the world
Ukraine continues to fight against a superpower invader in a war in which hundreds of thousands of its citizens have already been killed or wounded
Vasil Myroshnyk pictured delivering to shop keeper Raisa, who remains at her counter despite the encroaching war
What happens next is less certain. This winter has seen significant Russian advances along the eastern front. Exhaustion has set in, morale is dropping, ammunition is in short supply and Ukraine’s army has been bled almost dry. Thousands of air force personnel are being hastily transferred to fight as infantry in the frontline trenches. And President Donald Trump has returned to the White House.
Until now, the United States has been, by some distance, the largest supplier of military aid to Ukraine. That could soon change.
If Trump does severely reduce US aid, Ukraine could be pressured into accepting a humiliating and dangerous peace – assuming Putin doesn’t decide to push for complete military victory. This is a dangerous moment.
Meanwhile, the war rages on. Mail cameraman Jamie Wiseman and I have covered this conflict since the first day of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
We have spent the past ten days on Ukraine’s north-eastern frontlines, alongside the Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting on both sides of the Russian border and the civilians still trying to live in this killing zone.
For most of them the question of what President Trump decides for Ukraine is secondary to the everyday challenges of staying alive.
At least the weather has been kind to Ukraine this winter. On our way in from Poland we see no snow until Kyiv. Russia’s continued blitz against the energy infrastructure is not as effective or morale-sapping when the temperature is above zero.
In the capital, the supper table talk is of the desperation of the military ‘press gangs’ who comb the streets for those avoiding conscription into the depleted armed forces.
Ukraine refuses to lower the minimum age for compulsory military service from 25 to 18, despite pressure to do so from both the Biden and now Trump administrations. President Zelensky argues that they need more weapons rather than younger infantry. But that means the war is being fought largely by Generation X – the average age of a combat soldier is 43 – and the pool of potential recruits is shrinking.
Snowy scenes in Kyiv, where winter so far has been mild as Russia continues to attack the country’s energy infrastructure
A tank sits under a blanket of snow in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, a constant reminder of the danger the locals live in
In the capital, the supper table talk is of the desperation of the military ‘press gangs’
Locals in Kyiv walk past tanks and military vehicles covered in snow in Kyiv
One friend tells me of the experiences of two of his acquaintances who fell into the clutches of the ‘recruiters’. One is an amphetamine and vodka addict who was plucked by the press gang while being treated at a drug rehab centre. Unsurprisingly, he failed the army medical and now screams abuse about Zelensky from his apartment block balcony.
The other is a serving soldier in an air defence unit who was literally ‘grabbed off the street’ while in Kyiv on leave. Protesting, he was manhandled into a vehicle and taken to a recruitment depot, even though he had papers to prove his military identity. Eventually he was released.
We hear the frontline at Lyman has been breached by the Russians, who are also two kilometres from Kupiansk. Kurakhove has fallen and Pokrovsk is on the brink. All are small eastern cities in which we have spent time in the past 12 months.
We also hear about the latest Russian threat. This is the fibre optic kamikaze drone, which is guided by up to 10 kilometres of fine wire rather than radio signals and is therefore immune to electronic jamming – though not the risk of being caught up in trees.
We set off for the Front. Our first stop is a hamlet in the depths of rural Sumy, not far from the border with Russia’s Kursk Oblast in which Ukrainian forces have been fighting since last August.
Our hosts are old friends – Thunder Company, a fire support unit of the 41st brigade. These men – and women – are exemplars of Ukraine’s reliance on Generation X and the high attrition it is suffering. Over the past 18 months – without rest or rotation – the unit has fought in Bakhmut, Kupiansk, Toretsk, Niu-York, Chasiv Yar and now inside Russia as part of the Kursk offensive. The latter incursion is intended to provide Ukraine with a bargaining chip in any peace talks.
We stay near Company HQ, in an abandoned cottage with no running water, falling asleep to the sound of rats under the floorboards.
The following day dawns crisp and beautiful but by the afternoon a freezing fog is settling. We are waiting for Sasha, the leader of Thunder’s mortar team, to arrive from the Kursk firebase. Snow begins to fall.
Military vehicles in the hills of Sumy, not far from the border with Russia’s Kursk Oblast
Vasil pictured here outside his bomb damaged office which has been covered with a makeshift roof
Vasil holding up a copy of this weeks Bohodukhiv Newsletter which he goes to great lengths to deliver
At 3pm Sasha arrives. He is a 40-something father of one, from Odesa, and a lawyer by training. Now he is just another dog-tired soldier, uncharacteristically solemn and looking forward to a wash and a hot drink. First of all, like all infantrymen, he needs a cigarette. Then he will talk.
How is Kursk different from the Ukrainian frontlines? ‘It is difficult because the areas are so vast,’ he says. ‘The treelines are distributed unevenly, so you have to spend more time travelling in the open when approaching fire positions. The usually clear frontlines are more fluid if not absent.’ This has led to casualties. In September his platoon was ambushed and almost cut off, losing all their vehicles, equipment and one soldier who is still missing, fate unknown.
‘We monitored Russian social media channels, because we thought he might be in captivity,’ Sasha says. ‘The Russians uploaded his documents and his notebook, but they didn’t show him. We hope he is still alive.’
In a second ambush, the mortar platoon lost another two men – Generation X-ers, aged 46 and 50 – seriously wounded by small arms fire when they were sheltering from drones in a treeline.
He says the Russians have command of the air over the Kursk battlefield and an overwhelming superiority in bombs, shells and drones. His team has been targeted by the new fibre optic ones, which he describes as ‘a formidable new weapon’.
He adds: ‘If it has already aimed at you, then electronic warfare will not save you. [Only] if you hide somewhere in the bushes.’ (The only way to stop it is to snag its control wire.)
The Thunder mortarmen have also seen action against the thousands of North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia in Kursk, though reports suggest that Kim Jong Un’s men have been absent from the frontline since mid January after suffering heavy losses.
‘We have no direct [small arms] contact but I’ve watched them on the drone feeds and we have launched fire missions against them,’ Sasha says.‘Let’s just talk about their numbers. There are a lot of them. Russia is also a rather big country.
A Ka-52 helicopter gunship of the Russian air force fires rockets at a target at an unknown location in Ukraine
Ukrainian servicemen of the 33rd brigade operate a Leopard battle tank
Plus North Korea now. They outnumber us. I can’t say how many times, but they have an advantage of maybe dozens of times in terms of manpower.’ Sasha says they refer to Kursk as ‘the cursed land’.
‘Everyone agrees that it is easier to fight on one’s own land from the point of view of motivation. Also the results of our work are deteriorating, because we are losing guys due to wounds, deaths. We need reinforcements and the reinforcements need to be trained, and those who remain want to rest.
’The Thunder Commander, call-sign Poacher, is a burly 50-something of habitual good humour. But when asked about his unit’s role in the Kursk operation he grows sombre, if not angry.
‘This is a political adventure that brings only some political benefits, showing the inability of the Russian Federation to defend its territory,’ he tells me. ‘We have zero [tactical] successes there. We don’t f***ing need it.’
How long can Thunder company keep going without any rest? ‘I don’t know.
’At last, we reach Odnorobivka. The village streets are deserted, each one marked by the fall of artillery or bombs, though the effect is softened by the snow. A cafe had received a direct hit, similarly an apartment block. It seems no one lives here any more. ‘I hate this silence,’ says Vasil.
He brightens when the grumble of artillery comes rolling across the steppe. Someone else has got the Russian artillery’s attention. That said, we are within heavy mortar range. Almost a grenade’s toss from the ‘cursed land’.
Newspapers under his arm, he takes us up steps through a door and into another, more familiar and altogether homely world.
Vasil Myroshnyk on the way to the battered Ukraine frontier village of Odnorobivka. He’s pointing towards Russia only a few Kilometres ahead
Newspapers under his arm, Vasil takes us up steps through a door and into another
The battered Ukraine frontier village of Odnorobivka, part of Vasil’s newspaper round
Jolly-faced Raisa in her old-fashioned convenience store with Vasil in Odnorobivka
We find ourselves in an old-fashioned convenience store, with a counter, shelves and glass cabinets that display everything from toothpaste to cured meat.
From behind the counter a plump, jolly-faced woman called Raisa advances on Vasil and hugs him. This is less a newspaper delivery than the stagecoach arriving at Fort Apache.
She says that there are only 80 out of the pre-invasion population of 800 residents remaining.
‘But even if there are only five people left here I would stay to keep the shop going. There’ve been no direct hits on the village for ten days now, though we hear the shells falling in the fields nearby.’
Each week the newsletters sells – for 10 Ukrainian hryvnia or 20p apiece – a remarkable 20 to 30 copies in this village, or one for every three or four remaining residents. Bucking a global media trend towards digitalisation, physical newspapers have made a comeback in these frontline areas. Unlike the internet, television or radio, they cannot be jammed, cut or otherwise blocked, save by attacking Vasil’s van.
Russia has already tried to stop him. The newsletter’s former office – a 150-year-old building in the centre of Zolochiv – was damaged nine times by artillery in 2022 when it and its website were publishing details of atrocities by the Russian invasion forces.
The town hall, directly across the road from the newspaper office, also received several direct hits. Eighty-one citizens have died in a town of 23,000. ‘We have to go. We can’t stay in this place for long,’ the editor warns as we linger in the shop.
We say goodbye to Raisa and set off again over the steppe in the little, slip-sliding van. On his rounds Vasil is regularly overflown by Russian drones, he says.When we see battered Zolochiv on the horizon it feels like we have reached safety.
A forest a little way behind Kharkiv frontline. We are waiting for the crew of a Lion armoured recovery vehicle which is resting nearby under camouflage netting, its hull down in a tank ‘scrape’ – a bunker with a downward ramp to hide it. The forest is pitted with abandoned Russian infantry dugouts. After dusk tonight we will accompany them forward when they attempt to retrieve a tank that has been disabled further to the north.
The crew of a Lion recovery vehicle, including Luzia (left) and Grandpa (right), who are recovering stricken tanks often under fire
The Lion armoured recovery vehicle under camouflage netting
The Lion recovery vehicle crew working under extreme risks to recover the stricken tanks
The recovery men appear. Their average age is 44. The oldest is in his late 50s and goes by the call-sign Grandpa.
Their vehicle can pull 75 tonnes and is protected against kamikaze drones by an electronic warfare array and a steel cage. The job is like being AA or RAC roadside recovery men – with extreme jeopardy. Which is why they work almost always at night.
I ask how long it takes to attach the steel hawser or towbars to a damaged tank. ‘Two minutes is our goal,’ says Kuzia as the forest air vibrates with artillery fire. ‘Speed is all, but sometimes we have difficulty.
‘The time for Russians to target us with artillery is about four minutes, though once it took us 15 minutes. Another time we had to work under mortar fire.’
He adds: ‘It’s best to think not about what can happen and get on with the job.’ They all laugh, a little nervously.
That night, we find ourselves just inside a muddy wood with Kuzia and his colleagues and the crew of the disabled tank.
It doesn’t take two minutes, it takes 20, under a moon that would be romantic in other circumstances. The tank is well wedged and that is part of the problem. Towbars are hammered on then off as the soldiers seek purchase and direction.
Men work in the hazardous space between the two behemoths. The Lion’s engine is roaring, straining, to no avail until at last the disabled tank begins to move. Inch by inch, it is manoeuvred between tree trunks and into open field, swinging through 180 degrees. And away into the night.
‘Good teamwork!’ the tank company commander announces. But will the ‘good teamwork’ continue now Trump’s back? Ukraine – or at least those who have time to think – holds its breath.
