Living in terror on Ukraine’s frontlines

The border guard takes my passport, glowers and slams shut his small kiosk window. We are into hour three of attempting to enter Ukraine, and we are trapped in paperwork hell. The Soviet Union may have collapsed, but its heritage lingers in the bureaucracies that succeeded it. The Ukrainian-Polish border is no fun. In Poland, forms must be correct and stamped in triplicate. On the Ukrainian side, one is forced into a poured-concrete hell of photocopying and surliness. This is only the start of our adventure, which will take us to Kyiv and then onwards to the frontlines of the conflict.

My trip from London to Ukraine begins when I set out in a 4×4 packed with humanitarian aid for the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s 110th Brigade. I’m travelling with James Glancy, a highly decorated former Royal Marine, and together we are filming a documentary, which will appear later this year. I am a former British paratrooper, but nothing in my past quite prepares me for what I am about to witness.

We are guided by Viktor, our Ukrainian fixer and a chaplain in the Ukrainian armed forces. Like James and I, Viktor is also a veteran of Afghanistan – although of the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, not the NATO operation. Through him, we gain access to the frontlines, where life balances on the knife-edge between endurance and annihilation.

I was in Gaza only the week before, and it is clear that the fight here is the same: the free world in the form of Israel and Ukraine, battling the forces of darkness. As I walk Kyiv’s streets, it feels uncannily similar to my experiences in Tel Aviv. Cafés open, war correspondents playing at Hemingway fantasies, and the odd siren punctuating an otherwise ordinary day. Then the war pierces the illusion.

In Kyiv, one is struck by the countless flags that ripple across Maidan Square, each one commemorating the fallen, a symbol of a life cut short, a family broken. In Lviv, the cemetery has been transformed into a shrine. Each memorial drags the cost of Vladimir Putin’s war from the realm of statistics into the agony of the personal.

With it comes shame on my part. Yes, Britain has given much. Yes, Ukrainians are grateful and embarrassingly so, with talk of ‘Boris Churchill’. However, when you look into the eyes of grieving parents at the graves of their sons and daughters, you feel the unbearable weight of our failure and the cost of this war. The West has not done enough.

That shame deepened when Donald Trump arrived in Alaska to roll out the red carpet for Putin’s imperial delusions. In Ukraine, the reaction is bitter contempt. They feel that America’s hands are soaked in their blood. Ukrainians despise both men, and they know the truth that we in the West still try to wish away: any ‘peace deal’ with Putin is worth less than ash. This week, while the world’s media obsessed over meetings a continent away, Ukrainians continued to endure this awful war, in which they are the victims.

We travel thousands of miles, from the capital to the edge of conflict itself. As you move south, the war gradually reveals itself. Shorter curfews, more checkpoints, increased military traffic and ‘dragon’s teeth’ – anti-tank defensive lines across glorious miles of fields of sunflowers.

At our closest, we get seven kilometres from the front, well within range of Russian drones. With Zaporizhzhia’s police chaplains, we deliver bread and water to families close to the frontline who refuse, or are unable, to leave their homes. One family stand out: father, mother, aunt, daughter, surviving on what pittance they could eke from their smallholding. The chaplain pleads with them to flee, but they cannot: one family member was too sick. Within 24 hours, their home is obliterated by a Russian drone. The father and eldest son now lie dead.

We visit the survivors of that broken family, bringing food, Lego and a stuffed toy. Our attempt at a small kindness amid a vast cruelty. The next morning, Zaporizhzhia reels from another attack: a missile into a bus stop at rush hour; 30 wounded, three dead.

Nothing could have prepared me for the drone war. Evil seas of first-person-view drones prowl the skies like falcons waiting to strike. Electronic countermeasure equipment is on every vehicle, broadcasting its own deadly signatures in ceaseless games of cat-and-mouse. These drones are flying improvised-explosive devices, controlled with precision, merciless in their pursuit. It’s more terrifying than anything I faced in Helmand.

The Ukrainian soldiers endure this every day. James and I come to feel it, too: the strain of listening for the buzz of drones is ceaseless. Every passing bird makes you jump: is it a bird, or is it death hurtling your way at 150 kilometres per hour?

I ask one soldier about his routine on the frontline. His answer is simple: ‘Every day, there are only two objectives: defending and staying alive.’ He has been at the front since 2022. A behemoth of a man, he was a bodybuilding coach before the war. His bearded, tanned face implodes when we ask about the friends he has lost. These men are buckled tight. The mental cost of the war is as staggering as the physical cost. As a fellow warrior, Ukraine’s soldiers have my eternal respect.

It is not only soldiers who embody heroism. Ordinary Ukrainians are warm, stoic and endlessly kind, too. They show a resilience that humbles me. They do not deserve this. They do not wish to kneel to Moscow. They long only for the same freedoms we take for granted, and to rebuild their homes, their towns, their country.

Viktor and his beautiful daughter, Anastasia, embody this spirit. Anastasia, normally a student in the UK, is our translator. She comes with us through every risky manoeuvre with a smile on her face. Viktor takes time to pray with every soldier we meet. His simple faith in God’s protection is deeply moving. The two of them embody everything wonderful about the Ukrainian people.

As I leave Ukraine, my thoughts return to that family shattered in Zaporizhzhia. No red carpet for them. No theatre of power and vanity. Only grief and the certainty that this horror might have been prevented. If only.

Andrew Fox is a former British Army officer. He is raising money to help with the Zaporizhzhia family’s funeral costs. You can make a donation here.