While the High Representative of the Union, Josep Borrell, keeps repeating that there is no fatigue on the part of the EU in supporting Ukraine, the same is true in Ukraine. Professional soldiers and civilians alike continue to mobilise to put an end to Russian aggression.
As the fighting continues in Bakhmut and the missile attacks intensify, EUROPE travelled with a small group of journalists to the Kyivv and Chernihiv regions from 22 to 26 May to meet Ukrainians who, from the very first hours of the invasion, took part in the defence of their country and who continue to do so.
“Kyiv was saved by regular people, because there were not enough regular military units to protect it. Some people were evacuated, some stayed and developed infrastructures to protect themselves, using hunting weapons. Still others organised themselves to help the army, fortifying the town with their own tractors”, explained Anatoli Pochodna, acting head of all the territorial units in the community of Feodosiivska, around twenty kilometres south-west of Kyiv.
Behind him, shots rang out. This is training for members of the territorial defence unit, using live ammunition supplied by the army or military organisations. On the edge of a forest, the volunteers have created a training camp with a 200 m long shooting range and a tactical exercise area made from old tyres.
These men, who continue to work as civilians, take turns ensuring the security of the area and assisting the armed forces. “They do not receive a salary. They are motivated to defend their land”, explained Mr Pochodna, himself a contractor in the civilian sector.
On the morning of 24 February, “we realised that we would have to fend for ourselves, we hadn’t received any orders”, explained Viktor Mikhailenko, the local governor. “We woke up after an explosion. People called each other in the village to ask what had happened”, added Valeri, 45, one of the volunteers, a businessman, local councillor and hunter in his spare time.
The villagers therefore got organised to protect themselves. The defence unit was created on 25 February 2022. In March 2022, there were more than 1,500 people on the volunteer list. Currently, there are 500 of them. According to Mr Pochodna, around 500 people have been mobilised from other services such as the army, special forces and border guards.
Initially, the volunteers used their own weapons - for the hunters - before receiving equipment from military organisations. Most of them had no military experience and had never even touched a gun. “Despite this, they were not afraid, they came and were ready to fight and defend their homes”, explained Igor Hryb, a Ukrainian soldier and member of the Platform for the Liberation of Political Prisoners, the NGO that organised the press trip in which EUROPE took part.
The volunteers first set up checkpoints to detect Russian infiltrators or saboteurs. According to Valeri, several of them were captured and handed over to the police.
For the past six months, at the request of the Ukrainian army, work has focused more on protecting critical infrastructure, in particular a major electricity transformer that supplies half the city of Kyiv. With the support of the local defence unit, a professional unit which, in six months, has shot down three F5 drones and a Kalibr missile.
In the early hours of 18 May, Valeri himself shot down a drone with his rifle as it approached an electric pylon around 100 metres away. “We heard the air defence alert, saw the drone and took up our positions. It was coming out of the forest towards the infrastructure”, he said, adding that the object was flying at low altitude and “sounded like a scooter”. According to him, the volunteers had studied the drones and therefore knew how to shoot them down.
“People were ready to fight to protect Chernihiv”
In Chernihiv, too, the population mobilised to defend the town. The oblast, north of Kyiv, shares 225km of borders with Russia and 232km with Belarus.
On 24 February 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine from the north. According to Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, head of the region’s military administration, the Russian soldiers expected to be greeted by the Ukrainian population, but this was far from being the case. “The Russians thought there would be no resistance and that they could go to Kyiv, but things have been very different, with resistance in Chernihiv and Kharkiv. The two towns were fortresses that forced the Russians to stay where they were”, he recalled.
This resistance was made possible by civilians. According to Mr Bryzhynskyi, “on the first day, 200 people were officially there to protect the town”, but from the second day onwards, many people came to the military administration and were integrated. According to the head of the military administration, by the end of the operation in Chernihiv, there were 20,000 soldiers, which “shows the extent to which people were prepared to fight to protect their town”.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church also took part, and continues to take part, in the war effort. In addition to military chaplains, it provides humanitarian aid and has taken part in the evacuation of more than 1,500 wounded soldiers and Ukrainian civilians from occupied areas. “Every month, we spend between ten and fifteen thousand dollars on urgent evacuation missions, the Metropolitan Eustratiy Zoria told EUROPE. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)