Ukraine war: ‘There is only us and them – enemies’ – Ukrainians dug in trenches on Belarus and Russia frontline
They tell us to run, and so we run. Through the scrub, the mud and the undergrowth until we stop under the shelter of trees. Out of breath, out of sight and, for now, out of danger.
This is a place of mud, weapons and nervous energy. We are in the area where the borders of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia converge. What was once a novelty on a map is now a tangible military pinch point and Russia’s next assault on Ukraine might well come through this terrain.
We are with the Ukrainian Border Force, who monitor and guard the frontier. A year ago, these people worried about customs checks on the hundreds of lorries that came through every day, en route between Turkey and Russia. It was, says a smiling, broad-shouldered man guard called Barack, “good work – interesting, not too hard”.
Now, there are no lorries and the guards have become the first line of defence. If Russian troops do pour through this border once more – and there is a growing feeling that they will – then these men and women will be the ones to greet them; to try to repel the Russian army. And so, the border guards have adapted to a new and vastly more perilous world.
“I don’t want to do this,” one of them says to me. “But I do it because I love my land and my country. If I need to fight, I will do this without thinking. It’s just work.”
But of course, it isn’t really “just work”. Through the sights of a heavy machine gun, you can see Belarus, just a few kilometres away. The Russian border is not much further away, and shells are fired over regularly. We can hear the regular booms as they land.
Many people around here have left. Those who remain have become accustomed to violence raining down on them – they use bicycles instead of cars, because bikes don’t attract drones.
Barack is a border guard stationed at the triple frontier between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine
Bonhomie, determination and adrenaline
Not far away is a small village that stands right on the border, cut off from the world. It was once home to 100 people but has been almost completely demolished. Maybe ten people remain, and they are almost unreachable.
We are the first foreign journalists to come here and spend time with these guards. What we find is a blend of bonhomie, determination and adrenaline. They’ve already seen one Russian invasion here and they fear another.
Thousands of newly mobilised Russian troops have been sent to Belarus this month to create a so-called “regional force” to defend the border.
A man in a balaclava readies a British-made NLAW missile launcher
In theory, it is a collaboration between the two countries, but few, beyond the Kremlin or Minsk, take that at face value. Just about everyone else sees it as a device for strengthening the Russian presence ahead of a possible attack, designed to stretch Ukrainian resources by opening up another offensive.
There is a precedent, of course. Back in February, Russian troops came over this border and took over the area. They formed a long convoy of vehicles that set off in the direction of Kyiv, before eventually withdrawing in April.
Since then, the border guards have been preparing. They have dug long trenches, where you walk through mud in near darkness with thoughts of World War One in your mind. And yet, in one of these underground rooms, we see computer terminals linked to the Starlink satellite systems.
Oleksander and Olga’s ceiling fell in on them after an explosion rocked their home
I talk to Barack in a room carved out from the trench. There are wooden boards on the floor and a crude bunk bed in the corner. He laughs when I say it feels like we’ve gone back a century, but agrees. I ask him about the Russian troop build-up a short distance away.
“They are becoming more aggressive, but our Ukrainian forces give them a bloody nose!” he laughs again.
‘We need more weapons’
They have a variety of weaponry – heavy machine guns, anti-tank missiles, rifles, ammunition and so on. There are minefields around us and a variety of concealed look-out posts. The job of preparing to resist a huge invading army is an intimidating one. It’s not one that they’re really trained for, but it’s one they’ve embraced.
The trouble is that while the spirit is boundless, the resources are not.
“We need more weapons because we don’t know the intensity of the possible attack. We do not know how long we will need to maintain the defence on the border,” says Halyna, the spokesperson for the Chernihiv border guard unit.
“We are reacting to the raising of the risk by the invasion with more preparation, more fortification – we want to stop them at the border.
“We need heavy weapons. If they send infantry, you can use assault rifles and machine guns and it will all be contained. The problem begins when tanks and their armoured personnel carriers come from their side.”
What, I ask, were the lessons they learned from the February attack?
“That they are unpredictable. This is the first lesson. And they are not our friends.”
Much of the infrastructure around Horodnia hasn’t been repaired since the last assault by Russian troops
It is a lesson that came as a brutal shock to many people in this region, where Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians have mixed for so many years. The nearest town to this border is Horodnia, which was the first to be taken by the Russians and the last to be relinquished.
They have rebuilt and repainted, but you can still see scars. A little out of town, we came down a rough road and found burnt out trucks, craters, shell casing and even an unexplored rocket lying in the woods.
‘No more brotherly Belarus, no more good Russia’
The houses bear witness to the violence. Oleksander and Olga remember it well. An explosion shook their house so violently that the ceiling fell in on their heads. “There are relatives of ours in Russia and everywhere but now the situation is such that we cheer exclusively for our country,” says Oleksander.
“There is no longer a friendly, brotherly Belarus, or a good Russia. There is only us and them – enemies. This is it.”
It is tempting to be intoxicated by this bravado. Certainly, Ukraine is a nation where resilience is armoured by a sense of grievance and the support of so much of the world. But it is also a nation whose heart has broken.
Nadia lives not far from the triple frontier between Belarus-Russia-Ukraine. She is Belarusian but lives in Ukraine
There is a house at the end of the street that is burnt out. It was bombed, caught fire and was remorselessly wrecked. Nadia watched all this happen from over the road, terrified. She raised the alarm, brought as much water as she could and then cried.
Not long after, her mother died.
Nadia is Belarusian but came here many years ago. Now she is fragile and scared, prepared to hide from another Russian invasion in the outside cellar where she keeps potatoes for the winter. But she fears it would simply collapse and seal her in.
“There is no rest for us here. My nerves are completely gone. What has Ukraine done to them? We have such great people here. They are peaceful people.
“So many people were killed. So many kids. So much grief.” And she weeps.
An oil tanker seized by the US off the Venezuelan coast on Wednesday spent years trying to sail the seas unnoticed.
Changing names, switching flags, and vanishing from tracking systems.
That all came to an end this week, when American coast guard teams descending from helicopters with guns drawn stormed the ship, named Skipper.
A US official said the helicopters that took the teams to the tanker came from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford.
The USS Gerald R Ford (in grey) off the US Virgin Islands on 4 December. Source: Copernicus
The sanctioned tanker
Over the past two years, Skipper has been tracked to countries under US sanctions including Iran.
TankerTrackers.com, which monitors crude oil shipments, estimates Skipper has transported nearly 13 million barrels of Iranian and Venezuelan oil since 2021.
And in 2022, the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed Skipper, then known as Adisa, on its sanctions list.
But that did not stop the ship’s activities.
Skipper pictured from the Venezuelan shore. Source: TankerTrackers.com
In mid-November 2025, it was pictured at the Jose Oil Export Terminal in Venezuela, where it was loaded with more than one million barrels of crude oil.
Skipper (R) loads up with crude oil at the Jose Oil Export Terminal in Venezuela. Source: Planet
It left Jose Oil Export Terminal between 4 and 5 December, according to TankerTrackers.com.
And on 6 or 7 December, Skipper did a ship-to-ship transfer with another tanker in the Caribbean, the Neptune 6.
Ship-to-ship transfers allow sanctioned vessels to obscure where oil shipments have come from.
The transfer with Neptune 6 took place while Skipper’s tracking system, known as AIS, was turned off.
Read more:
Everything we know about dramatic ship seizure
Is this what the beginning of a war looks like?
Skipper (R) and Neptune 6 in the Caribbean Sea during an AIS gap. Source: European Union Copernicus Sentinel and Kpler
Dimitris Ampatzidis, senior risk and compliance manager at Kpler, told Sky News: “Vessels, when they are trying to hide the origin of the cargo or a port call or any operation that they are taking, they can just switch off the AIS.”
Matt Smith, head analyst US at Kpler, said they believe the ship’s destination was Cuba.
Around five days after leaving the Venezuelan port, it was seized around 70 miles off the coast.
Moving in the shadows
Skipper has tried to go unnoticed by using a method called ‘spoofing’.
This is where a ship transmits a false location to hide its real movements.
“When we’re talking about spoofing, we’re talking about when the vessel manipulates the AIS data in order to present that she’s in a specific region,” Mr Ampatzidis explained.
“So you declare false AIS data and everyone else in the region, they are not aware about your real location, they are only aware of the false location that you are transmitted.”
When it was intercepted by the US, it was sharing a different location more than 400 miles away from its actual position.
The distance between Skipper’s spoofed position on AIS (towards the bottom right hand corner) and its real position when seized by the US. Source: MarineTraffic
Skipper was manipulating its tracking signals to falsely place itself in Guyanese waters and fraudulently flying the flag of Guyana.
“We have really real concerns about the spoofing events,” Mr Ampatzidis told Sky News.
“It’s about the safety on the seas. As a shipping industry, we have inserted the AIS data, the AIS technology, this GPS tracking technology, more than a decade back, in order to ensure that vessels and crew on board on these vessels are safe when they’re travelling.”
Dozens of sanctioned tankers ‘operating off Venezuela’
Skipper is not the only sanctioned ship off the coast of Venezuela.
According to analysis by Windward, 30 sanctioned tankers were operating in Venezuelan ports and waters as of 11 December.
About 30 sanctioned tankers are currently operating in Venezuelan waters. Source: Windward Maritime AI Platform
The tanker seizure is a highly unusual move from the US government and is part of the Trump administration’s increasing pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
In recent months, the largest US military presence in the region in decades has built up, and a series of deadly strikes has been launched on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
In the past, Mr Ampatzidis explained, actions like sanctions have had a limited effect on illegally operating tankers.
But the seizure of Skipper will send a signal to other dark fleet ships.
“From today, they will know that if they are doing spoofing, if they are doing dark activities in closer regions of the US, they will be in the spotlight and they will be the key targets from the US Navy.”
The Data X Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Donald Trump wants you to know that there is one leading reason why he is bearing down militarily on Venezuela: drugs.
It is, he has said repeatedly, that country’s part in the production and smuggling of illegal narcotics into America that lies behind the ratcheting up of forces in the Caribbean in recent weeks. But what if there’s something else going on here too? What if this is really all about oil?
In one respect this is clearly preposterous. After all, the United States is, by a country mile, the world’s biggest oil producer. Venezuela is a comparative minnow these days, the 21st biggest producer in the world, its output having been depressed under the Chavez and then Maduro regimes. Why should America care about Venezuelan oil?
Money latest: Urgent warning over tumble dryers
For the answer, one needs to spend a moment – strange as this will sound – contemplating the chemistry of oil. Crude oil is, as the name suggests, quite crude. It’s an organic compound, the product of ancient organisms that have been compressed and heated up under the earth’s surface for hundreds of millions of years. And as such, crude oil is subtly different depending on the conditions under which those organisms were compressed.
In some parts of the world, crude oil comes out of the ground as clear, flowing liquid. Sometimes it is green. Sometimes it is heavy, thick gloopy stuff. Oil producers have a word for these differing varieties: light, medium and heavy.
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Venezuela accuses US of ‘piracy’
US imports
And here’s the first thing you need to know. Most of America’s refineries are set up to process the heavy stuff. In other words, if America is going to keep its cars fed with gasoline, it needs heavy, gloopy crude. And since it costs many, many billions of dollars to overhaul refineries, no-one particularly wants to do that anytime soon.
Read more:
Why did the US seize tanker off Venezuela?
But the second thing you need to know is the vast majority of that oil produced in America, thanks to the shale revolution, is light crude. In other words, America’s refineries are not compatible with most of the oil America produces.
US oil map
The upshot is that for all that America theoretically pumps more crude oil than it would ever need out of its own territories, it is still totally dependent on trade to meet its demands for heavy oil. Most American crude is exported overseas. And America imports well over 6,000 barrels of oil a day to feed its refineries in Texas and Louisiana with the heavy stuff they can digest.
All of which brings us to Venezuela, because it is, alongside Canada and Russia, sitting on the world’s biggest reserves of heavy oil. Right now, most American oil comes from Canada but were Donald Trump keen to wean himself off Canadian crude, he is well aware there is a vast resource of it sitting on the other side of the Caribbean for all those Texas and Louisiana refineries.
World
‘Venezuela has already been invaded’ says Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado when asked about Trump intervention
Venezuela’s Nobel Peace Prize winning opposition leader has said her country has “has already been invaded”, when asked whether she would support a US invasion.
Speaking at a news conference in Oslo after being awarded the famous prize, Maria Corina Machado replied: “Look, some people talk about invasion in Venezuela and the threat of an invasion in Venezuela and I answered Venezuela has been already invaded.
“We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents. We have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime.
“We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels that have taken over 60% of our populations and not only involved in drug trafficking, but in human trafficking in networks of prostitution. This has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas.”
The 58-year-old engineer continued: “Where do those funds come from? Well, from drug trafficking, from the black market of oil, from arms trafficking, and from human trafficking. We need to cut those flows.”
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Maria Machado speaks in Oslo
Read more:
Peace prize winner makes appearance
Venezuela’s opposition leader greets crowd
It comes after news of the US seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in the latest push by the Trump administration to increase the pressure on the government in Caracas.
America has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on boats it claims were drug-smuggling in the Caribbean.
Ms Machado made her return to the public eye in the early hours of Wednesday morning from the balcony of the Norwegian capital’s Grand Hotel, after covertly travelling to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
She didn’t make it to Oslo in time to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in person, after an extraordinary day shrouded in uncertainty over her whereabouts.
It was accepted on her behalf by her daughter Ana Corina Sosa.
The opposition leader has dedicated her prize in part to US President Donald Trump, who has said he himself deserved the honour.
Ms Machado has aligned herself with hawks close to Trump who argue that Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security, despite doubts raised by the US intelligence community.
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