In a Ukrainian border town, children practise drills and stockpile supplies in case of Russian attack

People in the Ukrainian town of Ovruch, a scant 15 kilometres from the border with Belarus, know that should the current crisis with Russia metastasize into a full-on military conflict, their community could be the first that invaders come to.

"Teachers remind us that if there [is] an offensive from the Russian Federation or Belarus, we shouldn't panic," said Ivan Trostenyuk, a 14-year-old eighth grader at local School Number Three, in a recent interview with CBC News while on his way home.

"Our [Ukrainian] soldiers will help us."

While Ovruch only has a population of 15,000, it is 200 km — or roughly a two-and-half-hour drive — north of the capital, Kyiv. The recently upgraded highway south of Ovruch is one of the fastest routes to reach Ukraine's political and economic centre.

For weeks, Russia has been pouring troops and advanced weaponry into Belarus, with some of the staging areas less than 30 km from Ukraine. Military experts estimate there may now be more than 30,000 Russian troops inside Belarus, and on Thursday, they began moving in formation and conducting live-fire exercises in drills called Allied Resolve.

More than 130,000 Russians in total have assembled at locations near Ukraine's land border, in addition to a large naval deployment in the Black Sea.

Some Western analysts claim the Russian deployment in Belarus represents the largest movement of Russian troops into that country since long before the end of the Cold War. It also provides President Vladimir Putin and his generals with additional options to attack Ukraine, should they choose to do so.

"When you have this amount of troops amassing on the borders, with the amount of naval power [Putin] has moved into the Black Sea, with the amount of air power that he has, he has to do something. He just simply can't back down," said Canadian Mychailo Wynnyckyj, an associate professor of sociology and director of the doctoral program at the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School.

Putin has demanded that the U.S. and NATO rewrite existing security arrangements in Europe, refuse to ever admit Ukraine to NATO and pull all foreign troops out of former Soviet republics or past members of the Warsaw Pact, such as Poland and Romania.

Wynnyckyj says Putin knows such demands cannot be met, and so he and many Ukrainians are preparing for the worst. "I think he's going to be moving in."

At the school in Ovruch, and others all over Ukraine, teachers have been taking children through emergency drills in case the conflict escalates.

"The plan of action for the kids depends on what signal we get," said principal Ludmyla Zalizko at School Number Three in Ovruch.

"If shelling or other scenarios [happen], we might move to the basement, or to the outside."

Several students told CBC News that psychologists have come into their classrooms to try to reassure them but also prepare them in case their town is attacked.