MYROPILLYA, Ukraine -- The vast green meadow where Vasyl Vlasenko's horses graze stretches all the way to the Psel River. Beyond it is Russia.
Before the full-scale invasion last year, Vlasenko, a 60-year-old farmer in his native Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine, had 400 cows, 60 horses, and a flock of sheep he never bothered to count precisely. Now, his farm lies in ruins.
As a result of multiple mortar strikes, 47 cows, four horses, and several sheep burned or bled to death. A barn with 50 tons of hay went up in flames, and several other buildings have been destroyed over the 20 months since the Russian assault began.
Russian soldiers stationed on a hill on the opposite side of the river can easily see everything on the farm -- and they also fly reconnaissance drones over it. Vlasenko swears that no Ukrainian soldier has set foot on his land. He doesn't know why the Russians shell it.
Out of 17 employees who once worked with him, only five have not quit.
The losses and the constant danger forced Vlasenko to sell most of his livestock. But he keeps working and running his business, which he has been developing since he graduated from the Moscow Veterinary Academy just three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The future of the farm is uncertain. Vlasenko has three sons: one emigrated to Germany, another serves in the Ukrainian Army, and he does not want to comment on the whereabouts of the third. He no longer speaks to his sister and aunt, who live in Russia.
Vlasenko's wife, Halyna, is from Bryansk, a Russian region that borders Ukraine north of Sumy. They met during his student days in Moscow.
"I've been thinking a lot about this war," he told RFE/RL as Halyna served borscht. "But I don't understand it."
Unending Destruction
The near-daily exchange of fire across this part of the Ukrainian-Russian border has been constant since April 2022, when Russia withdrew its forces after its failed attempt to capture Kyiv and occupy the Chernihiv and Sumy regions. The active front line is now fairly far away to the south and there is no combat on the ground here, but military targets and civilian facilities are regularly shelled by Russian forces.
In Myropillya, where Vlasenko lives, artillery, mortar, and drone attacks have damaged 97 buildings, including a school, a kindergarten, and a church. Two women have been killed and one person wounded.
Farmers continue to work despite the danger, loath to leave their land behind. Some harvest crops of wheat and barley in bulletproof vests, Olena Sharkova, a village council secretary who has led the community since its formal head resigned in March, told RFE/RL.
A shiny piece of metal is stuck in the ceiling above her desk in the village council building. The neoclassical Soviet-era building, still decorated with hammer and sickle and guarded by gilded statues of workers, was pierced by shrapnel after a Russian attack apparently targeting a nearby communications tower. The border is just 2 1/2 kilometers away.
The tower has been targeted four times, according to Andriy Vodopyanov, a local shop owner whose house adjacent to it was hit each time and is now covered with hundreds of little holes. Suffering from stress and illness, his wife left for Sumy, the region's capital. His shop, he says, would go bankrupt if not for the military personnel stationed in the area.
About 1,400 of Myropillya's 4,000 residents have left since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The local economy, primarily based on farming, is in tatters, and the community coffers are almost empty.
Out of 574 men eligible for military service in Myropillya at the time of the invasion, meaning those aged 18-60, more than 230 have joined the armed forces, the border guards, or the local territorial-defense unit, according to village records. Three have been killed and three severely wounded.
"We all understand we have our families behind our backs and our enemies before our eyes," Sharkova said.
'Strategy Aimed at Depopulation'
The situation is similar in dozens of villages and towns along the Russian border in the Sumy region.
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In Bilopillya, further north and less than 10 kilometers from Russian territory, a single attack on March 24 combining various weapons, including bombs dropped from Su-35 fighters and Shahed drones, damaged an administrative building, a police station, three educational institutions, a kindergarten, a hangar, 10 houses, and eight apartment blocks. Two people were killed and nine wounded.
An attack on July 17 hit a fire station, killing two residents and wounding 10 people at the spot. A 22-year-old firefighter, Serhiy Antonenko, died after several days fighting for his life in the hospital.
Local firefighters head out to clean up the effects of shelling in the area on a daily basis, Andriy Zaretskiy, the head of the local fire department, told RFE/RL. In summer and autumn, they spend time putting out fires in fields and grain-storage facilities caused by Russian shelling.
About 70 percent of Bilopillya's preinvasion residents have left temporarily or for good, Zaretskiy says. Many of those who stay are elderly or have no resources to live elsewhere.
Zinayida Myrlenko's home in Bilopillya was razed by Grad missiles in the March 24 attack. She has lost hope of rebuilding it but still tends the garden, growing fruit and vegetables. She cannot apply for state support because her late son, who is the legal owner of the building, moved to Russia and took Russian citizenship years ago, she told RFE/RL.
According to Alona Yatsyna, the head of Kordon Media, a new media outlet reporting on the military and humanitarian situation in the Sumy borderland, Russia is trying to achieve three goals with its attacks: destroy Ukrainian military targets, damage vital civilian infrastructure, and terrorize the local population.
"This is a strategy aimed at the depopulation of the region that has the features of genocide," Yatsyna told RFE/RL. She set up her outlet to draw attention to the persistent attacks on the borderland that became a "new normal," even for people in the region. She fears that a long-term conflict, which many believe is inevitable, could turn the area into a "gray zone," a degraded no-man's land.
'Deadly Cat-And-Mouse Game'
Ukraine is not leaving the Russian attacks unanswered. According to Dmytro Lantushenko, spokesman for the 117th Territorial Defense Brigade in the Sumy region, Russian and Ukrainian units stationed along the border are playing "a deadly cat-and-mouse game," shifting their equipment around, observing their opponents' movements, and striking when they see an opportunity.
Both sides rely mainly on mortars and reconnaissance drones, and their snipers keep some key spots in their sights, Lantushenko says. The Russians also use howitzers, tanks, and even helicopters for bigger strikes in different segments, he adds.
They also send sabotage groups across the border into Ukraine -- something that Ukraine's military intelligence chief, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, recently acknowledged does sometimes occur. "In most cases, the defense forces immediately repel the enemy, but unfortunately, sometimes there are losses and captives on the Ukrainian side," Lantushenko said.
More prominent cross-border incursions -- in the opposite direction -- took place in May and June, when anti-Kremlin fighters from the Russian Volunteer Corps and Free Russia Legion attacked towns and villages in Russia's Belgorod region.
Ukraine has also responded to Russian air strikes. Dozens of rocket and drone attacks on Russian territory, primarily in the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions, have been reported since the full-scale invasion. Ukraine does not publicly claim responsibility for these strikes, but Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that they view airfields, fuel depots, and military bases on Russian territory as legitimate military targets.
'A Split In Every Other Family'
All this was hardly imaginable not so long ago.
Due to its geographical proximity to Russia and the relative dominance of the Russian language, especially in urban areas, the Sumy region had been long perceived as mildly pro-Russian, despite roots in 17th- and 18th-century Cossack free settlements, known as "slobodas," that flourished on both sides of what is now the border. The long period of imperial Russian and then Soviet dominance over the region created deep connections between the Russian and Ukrainian populations.
Russia's unprovoked invasion severed these ties with unexpected speed.
"We simply don't want to have anything to do with them anymore," Oleksiy Pasyuga, editor in chief of the regional newspaper Vorskla, told RFE/RL. Soon after the Russian onslaught began, the daily -- named after a river that emerges in Russia and runs through the Sumy region on its way to the Dnieper -- started to publish exclusively in Ukrainian after relying mainly on Russian for more than 90 years.
The newspaper's office is in Velyka Pysarivka, a small town 5 kilometers from the border crossing where the first ground attack of Russia's full-scale invasion took place. At 4:35 a.m. on February 24, 2022, 15 minutes before the broadcast of the prerecorded speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he announced the "special military operation" against Ukraine, Russian forces struck the local checkpoint.
Through his office window later that morning, Pasyuga watched columns of Russian tanks and armored vehicles rumble down the town's main street and wondered what was coming. "It wasn't even fear, it was disbelief and shock," he recalled.
Expecting little resistance, Russian forces had hoped to swiftly seize control of the Sumy region and press westward towards Kyiv. But territorial-defense units became a thorn in their side, attacking with rifles, Molotov cocktails, and a small amount of anti-tank weapons.
The defenders managed to disrupt Russian supply lines and prevent the invading troops from entering the city of Sumy, setting the stage for a counterstrike that drove Russian forces from the region in April -- around the time the invading troops were retreating after failing to take Kyiv and Chernihiv.
But the short-lived occupation of the region and the relentless shelling that persists today have left a long-lasting mark on the local population, according to Oksana Kovaleva, a journalist who has been documenting evidence of Russian war crimes and life on the border for Vorskla.
Despite the shelling in Velyka Pysarivka, the daily has been printed out in 1,600 copies and delivered to readers -- many of whom have virtually zero access to information because of the destruction of infrastructure in the border region.
Kovaleva, 50, juggles her journalistic work with caring for an 8-year-old son, Oleksandr, who suffers from a rare heart defect, and providing for her two older children. She has collected dozens of stories of suffering and resistance in a book titled Mama, I Want To Live.
Since the full-scale invasion began, she has dedicated herself to "fighting against lies and aggression," she said. Like many families in Ukraine and Russia, hers has been harmed physically and rent apart by the war: she has broken off contact with two siblings who have long lived in Moscow, while a brother who serves in the Ukrainian Army was wounded at the beginning of the invasion.
"A split like this runs through every other family here," she said as she headed to Tarasivka, a village near Velyka Pysarivka, to report on a community gathering. Unlike most villages in the region, Tarasivka has historically been inhabited by ethnic Russians, and locals call it "the Russian village."
This history did not mean much for the residents hosting off-duty soldiers and a chaplain from Ukraine's 63rd Mechanized Brigade on a recent afternoon. The children had art classes -- a chance to interact with their peers in person at a time when school is held online due to the damage to facilities and daily danger of new attacks --- while the adults took in a folk choir and then gathered at a long table laden with traditional dishes.
Adhering to an unwritten rule in Ukraine, the diners raise a toast to victory, not to peace – a reflection of concerns that a truce would cement Russia's control over a substantial swath of Ukraine and leave the country vulnerable to renewed aggression. After the feast, the singing begins: Guests join the choir in laments about unfulfilled love between Cossacks and peasant girls, and the miserable fate of women who fall for men from across the border.
