By AFP and Kontur | 2025-06-17

STETSKIVKA, Ukraine -- Despite the driving rain, a few elderly residents wander into the streets of Stetskivka in northeast Ukraine to catch a yellow bus to go shopping in nearby Sumy, the provincial capital.

They are worried about the Russian drones that have been striking the area with increasing regularity, more than three years into Moscow's invasion.

"I'm afraid. Nobody knows what could happen to the bus we take," Galyna Golovko, 69, told AFP at the small shop she runs near the bus stop.

Golovko said she never goes out in the morning or evening when Russian drones crisscross the sky.

The border with the neighboring Russian province of Kursk is just 17km away.

Sumy province was the starting point for a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk last year.

Ukraine held swathes of the territory for eight months, until a spring offensive by Russian forces supported by North Korean troops pushed them back.

Moscow has since advanced towards the city of Sumy, taking several villages along the way and forcing mandatory evacuations of civilian residents.

Stetskivka is just 10km from the front line, and residents said there is heavy fighting nearby.

Beyond Stetskivka, "everything has been destroyed; there is not a single village," Golovko said.

On her shop counter, there was a plastic box with a few banknotes -- donations for a local family that lost its house, destroyed by a Russian glide bomb.

Buffer zone

Ten kilometers to the south lies Sumy, a city that had 255,000 inhabitants before the war.

So far, restaurants are crowded and there seems little concern about the Russian advance.

But buildings in the city bear the scars of Russian bombardments.

And, when the sounds of car horns go down in the evenings, explosions can be heard in the distance.

The streets are lined with concrete bunkers against the increasingly frequent strikes from Russia.

"The enemy is trying to advance," said Anvar, commander of the drone unit of the 225th regiment, which is leading the defense of the province.

"We are pushing them back. Sometimes we advance; sometimes they do," he told AFP in an apartment that serves as a base for his unit.

"We still have troops in Kursk province. Nobody has tried to drive them out," he said, calling the conflict in the province a "war of positions."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy June 13 said the Russian offensive in Sumy had been stopped, just a day after Russian forces said they had captured another village in the province.

Drone war

Sitting next to Anvar, one of his men soldered microprocessors in silence, except for electronic clicking that made the room feel like a laboratory.

Surrounded by 3D printers and piles of batteries, the members of Anvar's team are busy transforming Chinese drones into flying weapons.

"It is now a drone war," the commander said.

Anvar said that Russia was continually sending "cannon fodder" along this part of the front to try to overwhelm Ukrainian troops.

"I know [men] who have gone mad because of the number of [men] they manage to kill in a day."

Russian soldiers "continue marching calmly" amid the bodies of their fallen comrades, he said.

In Stetskivka, Golovko voiced confidence that Ukrainian soldiers would hold the line and said she was "not going anywhere."

"I will stay at home," she said tearfully, beating the counter with her fist.

"I have travelled to Russia. We have friends there, and relatives. Everything was fine before.

"One day, this madness will end. The madness that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin unleashed will end," she said in a shaky voice.

EU extends Ukrainians' right to stay until March 2027

Meanwhile, European Union (EU) countries last week approved a one-year extension of the temporary protection offered to Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia's war, allowing them to stay in the bloc until March 2027.

Some 4.3 million Ukrainians are registered as refugees across the EU, with Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic hosting the largest communities.

"While Russia continues to terrorize Ukrainian civilians with indiscriminate air strikes, the EU continues to show its solidarity," said Tomasz Siemoniak, the interior minister of Poland, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency.

"We will continue to offer protection for millions of Ukrainian refugees for another year."

Ministers also started debating preparations for an end of the system -- which is expected to see some Ukrainians return to their country, while others could seek the right to stay on in the bloc.

"The Polish presidency also initiated discussion on a strategy to phase out temporary protection once a just peace is achieved," said Siemoniak.

"In the near future, we will work towards common, EU-wide solutions in this area, including in the context of returns to Ukraine."

The 27-nation bloc granted Ukrainians temporary protections in the weeks after Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.