As border tensions continue to build with Russia, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has told New Zealanders in Ukraine to leave the country immediately.
Video / AP
A New Zealand journalist on the frontline in Ukraine believes an imminent Russian invasion is a 50/50 prospect, which would result in "very bloody, very brutal" fighting and high civilian casualties.
Fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin will unleash 130,000 troops currently massed near Ukraine's border and even order an"aerial bombardment" on the capital Kyiv have ramped up over the last few weeks.
But on Saturday Washington spy chiefs warned an invasion could come within days, prompting western governments, including New Zealand, to urgently pull their citizens out of the country.
"In response to heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the New Zealand Government is advising New Zealanders in Ukraine to leave immediately while there are commercial flights able to get them home," Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said yesterday.
Kiwi freelance photo-journalist Tom Mutch, who spent months reporting in Afghanistan last year as it fell back into Taliban control, was working in Iraq last month when word came through that Ukraine was "heating up".
New Zealand photo-journalist says war in Ukraine would be very bloody and costly. Photo / Supplied
The 30-year-old had been to Ukraine and its conflict region before as a UK parliamentary researcher on defence and security issues so he was well-placed to quickly get to grips with the escalating situation.
Christchurch-born Mutch, who has written for The Times, Telegraph, open Democracy, and Foreign Policy magazine, knew it was where he needed to be.
Ukrainian's drive in an armoured personnel carrier near frontline position in the Luhansk area in eastern Ukraine. Photo / AP Vadim Ghirda
While western intelligence agencies have been warning of a Russian invasion, locals have remained stoical and calm.
In the big cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, which is just 40kms from tens of thousands of Russian troops massed at the border, life has gone on "pretty much as normal".
The Kyiv opera house is advertising shows for the next few weeks. Friends make plans for upcoming weekends.
"But there's always a 'but' attached: the city could be under siege by then," Mutch says.
Last week, he covered supermodels on the catwalk of Ukraine's fashion week. Within days, he was with soldiers huddled on the frontline.
Members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, volunteer military units of the armed forces, train in a city park in Kiev last month. Photo / AP Efrem Lukatsky
A local woman explained to him how Ukrainians "live these insane double lives" where they go to work and endure normal days but when they return home for dinner, instead of sharing work stories they discuss evacuation strategies and where bunkers are located.
"She said that on the outside it's a completely normal life, yet there's this constant turmoil and fear hanging over everyone's head because we know all that could change in an instant," Mutch says.
Last month, as satellite images started to show the massing of Russian troops and military hardware on the border, it might just have been another of Putin's sabre-rattling moves.
But over recent weeks that has seemed "less and less likely", according to Mutch, who now believes an invasion is a 50/50 prospect.
"It's a coin toss, really," he says, pointing to some recent indications that Putin's plans are more than posturing, including evidence of mobile field hospitals and riot control police being mobilised.
For the last few days, Mutch has been in Mariupol, a border city of 500,000 people that was briefly captured by Russia-backed separatists in 2014 and has suffered significant conflict over the years.
Russian tanks take part in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range in the Rostov region in southern Russia last month. Photo / AP
Mariupol locals, he says, all remember the last war and have long been prepared for more fighting.
Access to the frontline has been remarkably easy - you can catch a train from the main centres and then hire a driver, or even catch a taxi "pretty bloody close to the action".
The frontlines of the Donbas region, which Mutch has visited several times, resemble First World War trenches. Walking through them, between sandbagged gun emplacements, he has to duck down, with snipers known to take potshots. Explosions are occasionally heard.
Across a wide-open field about 900m-1000m away are the Ukrainian separatists, who are pro-Russia and often professional Russian soldiers.
Destruction from recent fighting in eastern Ukraine. Photo / Tom Mutch
So what would an invasion look like?
The Russians have troops "pretty much everywhere around Ukraine", Mutch says, with the Crimean Peninsula stacked with poised soldiers, amphibious assault units in the south, and in the east the separatist-controlled Donetsk regions. In the north-east there are troops near Kharkiv, while they are also staging "military exercises" in neighbouring Belarus.
Various scenarios have been predicted, Mutch says, including the Russians making a land grab in the east, a push into Kharkiv, or they might try and take everything east of the Dnieper River which bisects Ukraine.
And then there's Kyiv. If the Russians make a play for the capital, with its pro-western population of three million, Mutch believes it could get extremely serious.
"If the Russians did decide to try and take Kyiv, you could see genuine urban warfare on a scale that people haven't seen since the Second World War," he says.
Tom Mutch (right) in Mariupol last week. Photo / Supplied
Any invasion would be "very bloody, very brutal", with new kinds of weaponry deployed and the likelihood of high civilian casualties.
Ukrainians hold no hope that Nato or other western allies will join them in the fight.
"They know they're pretty much going to be on their own."
Mutch, who went to Burnside High School, left for the UK as a 19-year-old to attend university. He's never been back.
He is a single man without children but his parents back in New Zealand worry about his safety while reporting in danger zones like Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, where he experienced the most intense fighting he's ever seen.
"The risks I've taken, I have chosen those risks. My family hasn't chosen them, so that's what I worry about more than my own personal safety," Mutch says.
"You take as many precautions as possible; you make sure you have body armour and travel with people you trust and know, and have people who speak the language. You can never really know how these things will turn out, but you have to suck it up and get on with the job."
