Ukraine loses one of its few advantages on the front line

There was a time not so long ago when the young Ukrainian drone operator could take out Russian tanks and armoured vehicles almost at will.

Just over six months ago, Darwin – to use the radio call sign by which he prefers to be known – racked up a personal record by  single-handedly destroying or damaging nine of the combat vehicles in one day.

This is no longer the case.

In recent months, the Russians have become more adept at electronically jamming the first-person view (FPV) drones that Darwin’s battalion once operated with such devastating effects along the Kupiansk front line in northeastern Ukraine.

It is, Darwin reckons, one of the main reasons – greater perhaps than Russia’s manpower advantage – that Ukraine is on the back foot not just around the embattled town of Kupiansk but along much of the 700-mile front line.

As a result, Kupiansk, which was once a potent symbol of Kyiv’s ability to triumph against the odds, has become emblematic of a starker reality that the Trump administration will point to as justification for ceasefire talks and a rapid end to the war.

There is little doubt – now that a deal has ben secured in Gaza – that Ukraine will become Donald Trump’s chief foreign policy objective this year.

The US president has already made it clear that he plans to bring Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, in from the cold and that he could limit aid to Kyiv in a push to end the conflict that has raged for nearly three years – even if it is on terms disadvantageous to Ukraine.

Sensing that the dial of history may be shifting in his direction, Putin indicated hours before Mr Trump’s inauguration that he was “open to dialogue” about Ukraine.

On the cusp of an uncertain new era in which US support will probably be more contingent and transactional than in the past, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, may struggle to persuade Mr Trump that Ukraine can still prevail militarily.

Moscow’s steady but remorseless advance

In recent months, Russian forces have steadily but remorselessly pushed deeper into Ukrainian territory.

The progress has been slow – often glacial – with outnumbered Ukrainian troops frequently and bravely holding their own. But there is no doubt that the front line is fraying in several places, testing the resolve of the Ukrainian people and growing scepticism in Washington.

Fortified front-line towns such as Kupiansk in the east of the Kharkiv region are an illustration of the challenges facing the Ukrainian army, whose units are engaged in a desperate battle to prevent it from falling for a second time.

The liberation of Kupiansk, which holds a strategic railway junction, was a significant moment in Kyiv’s surprise counter-offensive in the autumn of 2022 that forced the Russians out of most of the Kharkiv region.

But they returned and are advancing on the shattered town from two directions, with the nearest front line only 1.5 miles to the north east.

The jubilation with which Kupiansk’s residents greeted their salvation after six months of brutal occupation has long faded. After months of heavy bombardment, the town and its surrounding settlements have been left largely in ruins.

More than 97 per cent of the 75,000 people who once lived in the area have fled, according to Konstantin Tarasov, the deputy head of the regional police force. The last few children in the town were evacuated in recent weeks.

But for the 2,000 or so who remain, life is not just deeply uncomfortable as Moscow has shut down the town’s water supply but also immensely hazardous. The town comes under attack between five and 15 times a day, according to Mr Tarasov.

“Everything that moves on the road is a target,” he said, speaking from his sandbagged office as the steady drumbeat of artillery sounds in the distance.

“Our people are dying. The intensity of the shelling is increasing every day. We are being attacked with glide bombs, large shells, FPV drones, multiple rocket launchers – everything that Russia has in its armoury is being used here.”

Warnings fall on deaf ears

Mr Tarasov and his colleagues have urged Kupiansk’s remaining residents to leave and offered them lifts out of the town in armoured vehicles. The message, he sighed, falls largely on deaf ears as those who remain are mostly too elderly or too obdurate to listen.

On the outskirts of the town, Darwin’s comrades in the Achilles Battalion of the 92nd Air Assault Brigade are desperately trying to hold the line along with other units. In November, they managed to push back Russian forces after they captured the northeastern fringes of the area.

But the fight has become much harder since the Russians increased their ability to block the reconnaissance and attack drones that were have been such a vital component of the battalion’s operations.

“We can still attack but it is much harder than it used to be,” says Darwin, a grizzled veteran of 21 who has flown 5,000 drone sorties during the war.

“But now you need 100 drones with 100 payloads to swarm and overload their jammers. The success rate has fallen as a result.”

Life in Kupiansk has taken on a sense of deep foreboding as a consequence, with those living there aware that even if they survive the violence that regularly kills residents, it is quite possible that the town may fall in the coming weeks and months.

In between attacks, the town’s citizens sometimes venture outside – hunched against the cold – to buy food from the market or walk their dogs through abandoned playgrounds and woodland parks.

Manning a stall that sells assorted goods outside the region’s gutted indoor market, which was destroyed by a thermobaric bomb in October, Yurii Moskalenko, a 49-year-old divorcee, said that whatever the circumstances, he would rather take his chances in Kupiansk than live in a government-run hostel.

Expressing a sentiment growing more common in Ukraine, he believed that Mr Trump is right to push for talks but fears that the US president may deny his country a place at the negotiating table.

“It is certainly time to talk,” he said. “How many of our soldiers have died? How many buildings have been destroyed, how much territory has been lost?

“But negotiations must be between Zelensky and Putin – not between Putin and Trump. We don’t want to be caught between two hammers, with our voice silenced as our fate is decided in foreign capitals.”

Arguments about ceasefire discussions rage in households across the country and inevitably, there is a multiplicity of views about the wisdom of any negotiations with Moscow, particularly when it comes to the price Ukraine must pay for a peace that few will trust.

In the northern Saltivka district of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city and an area badly damaged by the Russian invasion that still remains under heavy bombardment, Oleksandr Cheltsov, a 49-year-old businessman, is not willing to cede any captured territory to Putin.

Halina Ivanova, his neighbour and a 63-year-old bookkeeper, disagrees. Living on the 14th floor of an apartment block makes it almost impossible for her to reach shelter when the air raid siren starts.

It is not just her own safety that she worries about. In December, her 23-year-old nephew Yaroslav, a soldier, was killed defending the town of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region to the south of Kharkiv.

“My sister doesn’t give a damn what territory we are going to lose,” she said. “She just wants her son back. Ultimately it is a question of territory or human lives. How many more young people are we willing to send to their deaths?”

Kostyantynivka, which remained relatively safe until a few months ago, has found itself near the front line and subjected to regular attack. As The Telegraph entered the town where Yaroslav was killed, Russian jets repeatedly struck it with glide bombs.

With Russian troops breaching Ukrainian lines around the city of Pokrovsk, which is 50 miles to the south, and engaged in house-to-house fighting in Toretsk, 13 miles to the south east, many are aware that the prospect of living under Russian occupation is not an idle one.

Yet amid the palpable fear, there was also a mood of defiance among those emerging on to the streets after the attack ended. Some urged Ukraine to keep fighting, ignore Mr Trump and resist calls to yield to Russia – whatever the odds.

“I feel angry rather than scared,” said Valentina, a pensioner in her 70s. “If the Russians capture this area, I’m not going to be silent. I will tell them exactly what I think of them. I’m sure I will be the first they put against the wall.”

“Yes, we may now have to talk to the Russians but Ukrainians are clear: we want peace but not at any price – and giving up any of our land is too high a price.”

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