In recent months, Ukraine has seen an increase in hostilities between its military forces and Russia-backed separatist rebels in the country’s east. 

Russia claims its soldiers are not on the ground in eastern Ukraine, where more than 14,000 people have died in the separatist conflict since 2014. But tensions soared this spring amid increasing cease-fire violations and the buildup of more than 300,000 Russian troops for military exercises along the Ukrainian border. 

Moscow said late last month that it had recalled its troops back to their bases, but Ukraine saw the exercises as ominous. Anxiety among Ukrainian soldiers remains high; the military says 36 soldiers have been killed in the east this year, including two who died last week under fire from the rebels. The number of casualties is a significant increase from the latter part of 2020. 

“We need to be more supported, given some special status — NATO membership,” said a Ukrainian soldier on the front lines who gave his name as Vasyl Adolfovich.

Earlier this month, an artillery shell fell outside a hospital in the town of Krasnohorivka near rebel-controlled territory, damaging part of the hospital’s ward for COVID-19 treating coronavirus patients and cutting off electricity in the medical facility.

The heightened tensions have motivated Ukrainian nationalists. The far-right National Corps party, which also has a paramilitary branch, held a training for volunteers last week. The head of the party's Kyiv office, Tamarin Serhiy, said the event was intended as a “counterweight to the imperialistic ambitions of the Russian Federation and its Federal Security Service (FSB) government.”  

“There always will be danger from our neighbor. Concentration of military forces on our borders or military parades in Moscow - it’s all danger for our country,” Serhiy said. "We are preparing them a warm welcome and for that, we are training.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed Washington’s support for Ukraine at a meeting last week with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the wake of Kyiv’s heightened tensions with Moscow. The two said that while Russia pulled back some of its forces from the border, a significant number of troops and equipment are still there, posing a threat.

Fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists erupted in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, called Donbas, shortly after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Efforts to negotiate a political settlement have stalled.  

Zelenskyy has made it clear that he wants significant action — “a clear signal about the European and Euro-Atlantic prospect,” as he said last week on Twitter, referring to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO and the European Union. “Postponing these issues for ‘later,’ ‘some day,’ ‘(in) 10 years’ has to end.” 

Both Zelenskyy and Blinken noted that while Russia has pulled back some of its forces from the border with Ukraine, a significant number of troops and equipment is still there, posing a threat.

Photos by Felipe Dana

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