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.
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“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.
There is a loud boom, the noise of an explosion, followed by the rat-a-tat of automatic gunfire.
Another explosion, more distant. A sign on the wall warns people against snipers. And all around us is the rubble of destruction.
Welcome to Tel al-Hawa, once one of the most affluent suburbs of Gaza City. Now wrecked, uninhabitable and destroyed.
Like so much of Gaza – and like all the places we drove through to get here – it is a wasteland. Buildings reduced to rubble, with a layer of dust covering everything.
The only people you see are Israeli soldiers.
Throughout my day in Gaza, I didn’t see a single Gazan.
Partly that’s because we were there with the Israeli military, who controlled all our movements. Partly it’s because places like this have been so completely wrecked that everyone has fled.
I came here on Friday afternoon, along with journalists from a variety of media outlets from around the world.
There was no sign that, a few hours later, Hamas would offer a response to the Trump peace plan, nor that there would be a surge of global optimism.
Because here, amid the dust and debris, everything is bleak and threatening. Everywhere you look there is devastation. The filaments of war are everywhere.
Gaza latest: World leaders welcome Hamas response to US peace deal
The soundscape is military. There are the roars of explosions, bursts of gunfire, the buzz of drones, the clatter of troops crunching through rubble and the roar of the engines that power tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs).
But every now and then there is silence. No birdsong, no gentle chatter. Nothing. It is unsettling.
IDF soldiers escort our correspondent throughout the city
The proof that people ever lived here is strewn around, as if a plane has crashed. There are scraps of everyday life – a milk carton, a phone cable, a shoe. A red toy car.
And curiously, amid all this horror, there is a bouquet of red roses. They are artificial, of course, but they lie in the street, dusty and forgotten. What were they for? A party, a wedding? Or just to brighten up a home that has now been blown away.
Booby traps, snipers on roofs
We spoke to Israeli military officials, who told us they had only recently taken control of this area.
The picture they paint of Hamas fighters is that of a depleted fighting force, reduced to maybe 2,000 people, including young and inexperienced conscripts.
Their tactics are those of a guerrilla force – snipers on roofs, booby traps, improvised explosive devices.
“But it can work. We had a soldier killed very near here a couple of weeks ago. And Hamas – they are brave,” he says.
“It is hard for us to have fought for two years, but it is harder for Hamas than us. We are strong enough to finish this war, bring the hostages back, eliminate Hamas and ensure 7 October can never happen again.”
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The military has occupied a building that was once either a large house or perhaps a series of apartments. Some of the rooms are simply forgotten, others are used by the IDF for offices, meals or meetings.
At the top of the building is a room with a large picture window. It looks out towards the Jordanian Hospital – the only building here, and I think the only building I saw throughout my visit that is unscathed.
The view of Gaza City from inside an armoured personnel carrier
The soldiers show us drone footage from inside the hospital campus, revealing a tunnel opening. Twenty metres below the ground, they say, was a Hamas workshop for designing and building missiles and rockets.
“It’s very significant,” one of the soldiers tells me, his face obscured by a balaclava. “The weapons manufactured here are being fired at our civilians. To find it here, under the compound with the hospital, shows how Hamas is using civilians to hide behind.
“We cannot attack that,” – he points at the hospital – “we don’t want to hurt the people there. It’s very significant to us as Israelis and also to the citizens of Gaza, who are being used by Hamas.”
An IDF official told me the hospital had also been used to “accommodate” between 50 and 80 Hamas fighters, and said Jordanian Hospital officials “definitely knew” about these people.
The destroyed skyline and the hospital
We later put these allegations to a Jordanian official source, who described the hospital’s work as “purely a humanitarian mission” that “has been providing treatment for tens of thousands of Gazans since 2009”.
“Jordan has no knowledge of the presence of tunnels under the location of the Tel al-Hawa hospital. Gaza is riddled with tunnels.
“There was no access into the hospital from any underground tunnels. Over its 16 years of operation, no fighters were present within the hospital’s premises.”
There are many stories of Israeli reserve soldiers saying they are both weary and wary, reluctant to sign up for another tour of duty.
Looking out over the hellish landscape of this shattered town, I could understand why some would think twice before rushing back.
Yet Richard Hecht did. Formerly the spokesperson for the IDF, Hecht, whose family moved from Glasgow to Israel when he was a boy, had been called at 11pm the previous evening and asked to accompany us.
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We talked, with dust billowing around us at a military compound on the outskirts of Gaza City.
“I hope this war comes to an end, and it would stop in a matter of moments if Hamas returned our hostages,” he told me.
“But the IDF is very determined – we want our hostages back. We are doing everything we can because we have to fight Hamas. What alternative do we have? We need to obliterate this group.”
Adam Parsons sees first hand the destruction around Gaza City
I suggest to him Israel’s military action now looks wildly disproportionate, especially bearing in mind they believe Hamas to now have only a couple of thousand fighters.
More than 65,000 people have been killed in Gaza, half of them women and children. And many, including a UN commission, have claimed this is genocide.
Hecht bristles. “That is an atrocious thing to say. Genocide has intent, it entails intent. It is an atrocious accusation and I cannot connect it. We are fighting Hamas. We are not fighting Palestinians.”
We have to leave. This town is regarded as an active conflict zone, and the regular chorus of gunfire and explosions testifies to that.
We clamber back into the APC, crewed by two men in their early 20s. One drives, the other stands up, using a hatch to access a machine gun based on the roof. He beckons me up to see the view.
Around us, a line of military vehicles. A digger comes into view, and then a plume of dust flies up as the APC reverses. I look down and see hundreds of spent casings around the machine gun. I point at them, and he nods slowly.
We drive away. The dust envelopes the vehicles again, and we leave Gaza City behind us.
As we head back towards the border, to the gates that divide a war zone from Israeli towns and kibbutzim, we see a huge plume of smoke rising a mile or two away.
In Gaza, the concept of peace feels almost unthinkable.
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World
Hamas agrees to release all remaining Israeli hostages – but seeks further talks on rest of Trump’s peace deal
Hamas has said it agrees to release Israeli hostages, dead and alive, under Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.
The group also said it wants to engage in negotiations to discuss further details, including handing over “administration of the enclave to a Palestinian body of independent autocrats”.
However, other aspects of the 20-point plan, it said, would require further consultation among Palestinians.
The announcement came just hours after President Trump had set a new deadline of Sunday to respond to his proposals, backed by the Arab nations.
The president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled the plan at the White House on Monday.
Israel agreed to the terms, which include an immediate ceasefire; the release of all hostages; Hamas disarming; a guarantee no one will be forced to leave Gaza; and a governing “peace panel” including Sir Tony Blair.
And on Friday night, a statement from Hamas confirmed “its approval to release all prisoners of the occupation – whether alive or the remains of the deceased – according to the exchange framework included in President Trump’s proposal”.
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Trump’s Sunday deadline threat
The group also said it was ready to engage in negotiations through mediators and that it appreciated “Arab, Islamc and international efforts, as well as the efforts of US President Donald Trump”.
But, Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera news the group would not disarm “before the Israeli occupation ends”.
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In a Truth Social post on Friday, Mr Trump said if Hamas did not agree to the peace deal by Sunday evening “all hell” would break out.
Ramping up pressure
He had posted: “An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday Evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time. Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas. THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.”
There has been no official response from the US and Israel to the partial acceptance.
Israel has sought to ramp up pressure on Hamas since ending an earlier ceasefire in March.
It sealed the territory off from food, medicine and other goods for two and a half months and has seized, flattened and largely depopulated large areas of the territory.
Experts determined Gaza City had slid into famine shortly before Israel launched a major offensive aimed at occupying it.
An estimated 400,000 people have fled the city in recent weeks, but hundreds of thousands more have stayed behind.
Most of Hamas’ top leaders in Gaza and thousands of its fighters have already been killed, but it still has influence in areas not controlled by the Israeli military and launches sporadic attacks that have killed and wounded Israeli soldiers.
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