April 30 marks Border Guard Day—another wartime anniversary, when many critical issues remain classified. On the eve of the date, a Ukrinform correspondent spoke with Andrii Demchenko, Assistant to the Head of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine and the agency’s spokesperson, about the situation at the front, the role of border guard combat units, and efforts to counter criminal groups and individuals attempting to flee the country. They also addressed sensitive issues, including corruption within the agency and measures to combat it—alongside the daily, often unheralded work of border guards on the front line.
Ukrinform: Mr. Demchenko, let’s begin with the situation at the front. What is currently happening along the Russian-Ukrainian and Belarusian borders? Where is the enemy most active, and are there signs of troop buildup in certain areas, particularly in the Chernihiv region?
Andrii Demchenko: I’ll start with some encouraging figures: over four years of the full-scale war, border guards have neutralized 43,000 occupiers—killed and wounded. More than 20,000 pieces of enemy military equipment and 40,000 unmanned aerial vehicles have been destroyed, including 2,000 Shahed drones. But behind these dry statistics lies the immense effort—and the lives—of border guards.
