REPORT || For Ukrainians, “enemy troops seem limitless.” Problem: Ukraine needs to maintain a foothold in Kursk at least until spring. It’s not easy – “we are being massacred but we can handle it”
Three days without sleep and enemy troops that seem “unlimited”: Ukrainian soldiers fight to stay in Russia’s Kursk region
por Nick Paton Walsh, CNN
Sumy, Ukraine CNN – A Ukrainian operation during the night in the Russian region of Kursk was not even a shootout, but it revealed the intensity of the battle in Kremlin territory. Five Russians advanced in the gray dawn of Sunday, but, as thermal drone images show, they were killed or injured by a drone as they tried to hide in trees.
“I have the impression that the Russians have unlimited people,” says Oleksandr, commander of a unit of the 225th Ukrainian assault battalion, as he describes the confrontation – he tells this story 11 hours after the incident, in a cafe in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.
“They send groups and almost no one is left alive. And, the next day, the groups move again. The next Russians, it seems, do not know what happened to the previous Russians. They go there, into the unknown. Nobody tells them anything about it and nobody gets back to them.”
Oleksandr and the two colleagues he is sitting with have hearing problems due to the constant bombardment. They provide a rare insight into the Ukrainian occupation of Kursk, which lasted almost four months.
The August invasion constituted a rare tactical success and strategic gain for Kiev, although the use of significant numbers of men and armor in the assault led to criticism that the shortages created by the invasion contributed to Russia’s advance on the eastern front of the Donbas.
Supporters of the Kursk operation suggest that it gave Kiev a vital advantage for any future peace talks – which could be initiated by US President-elect Donald Trump – meaning that Ukraine needs to maintain a position in Kursk at least until spring.
Funeral ceremony in Irpin, Ukraine, last month for Serhii Solovyov, a soldier who died during the Kursk offensive. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
Oleksandr is confident that his unit can hold out, but he is less certain as to why he should do so. “I don’t know what the goal really is. Maybe we should walk here for four months, turn around and leave, for example… But if the goal is to hold out to a certain point, we can hold out.”
Asked what his message is to Trump, Oleksandr demands that the West maintain the security guarantees it gave Ukraine in exchange for Kiev giving up its nuclear weapons, in a 1994 treaty known as the Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States gave assurances to Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to give up Soviet-era nuclear weapons.
“You took away our nuclear weapons, you promised us your roof”, says Oleksandr. “Keep your word. We are being massacred and you continue to try to play games to defend your interests. They had to give everything they could to end this war in two days. Who will believe the words of the United States or England, who are pissing themselves in front of Russia? Forgive my English”, he says, laughing.
Recent Russian attacks on its Kursk region have proved both ineffective and costly, he adds. On the other hand, the Ukrainian authorities admitted that 40% of the territory they conquered at the end of the summer had since been recovered by the Russians. Oleksandr’s unit did not sleep for three days, he explains, nor left the front line for eight months and was involved in fierce fighting in the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar.
According to Oleksandr, the Russian troops that the Ukrainians faced in Kursk were a mix of well-trained paratroopers from the 76th Brigade, but also less organized Chechens and African mercenaries. But he saw no sign of the 12,000 North Korean troops who the Pentagon said were sent to Kursk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also told Japanese news agency Kyodo on Sunday that some North Koreans had been killed by Ukrainian forces and would end up being used as “cannon fodder” by the Kremlin.
“When we catch them or see a body,” said Oleksandr, “then I will know for sure that they are here.”
Three weeks earlier, his unit had faced an attack by 40 armored vehicles and about 300 infantry soldiers, he says. Its drone commander, with the call sign “JS” for JavaScript, said the unit killed 50 Russians that day. “The vehicles that managed to get through unloaded the infantry,” reported JS, “so we finished off the infantry.” “And it was like that for almost 24 hours, without sleep, and the next day we finished off those who managed to hide from the bombing on the first day.”
