The dawn attack inside Russia’s Kursk region didn’t even amount to a shootout, but it revealed the intensity of the battle on Kremlin territory. Five Russians advanced in the gray dawn of Sunday (1st), but, as shown, were killed or injured by a drone as they tried to hide in the tree line.
“I have the impression that (the Russians) have unlimited people,” said Oleksandr, unit commander of the 225th assault battalion, describing the confrontation in a cafe in the Ukrainian city of Sumy 11 hours later.
“They send groups, and almost no one remains alive. And the next day, the groups go 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 comes back,” he said.
Oleksandr and two colleagues he is sitting with are having difficulty hearing because of the constant bombardment. They provide a rare insight into the Ukrainian occupation of Kursk, which lasted nearly four months.
The August invasion marked a rare tactical success and strategic gain for Kiev, although the use of significant manpower and armor in the attack led to criticism that the shortages created by the invasion contributed to Russia’s advance on the eastern Donbass front.
Proponents of the Kursk operation suggest that it provided Kiev with vital leverage for any future peace talks — perhaps initiated by US President-elect Donald Trump — meaning that Ukraine needs to maintain a foothold in the area, at least until spring.
Oleksandr expressed confidence that his unit could hold out, but less certainty about why. “I don’t know what the goal really is,” he said. “Maybe we should walk around here for four months and turn around and leave, for example… If the goal is to resist to a certain extent, we will.”
Asked what his message to Trump would be, Oleksandr demanded 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 Britain and the United States gave Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan guarantees for giving up their Soviet-era nuclear weapons.
“Did you take away our nuclear weapons? You promised us your roof,” Oleksandr said, using slang for protection. “Keep your word. We are being massacred, and you are still trying to play, to defend your interests. You had to give everything you could to end this war in two days. Who will believe the words of the United States or England, which tremble before Russia? Pardon my English,” he said, laughing.
Recent Russian attacks in his Kursk area have proven to be as ineffective as they are costly, he said. Separately, Ukrainian officials admitted that 40% of the territory they seized at the end of the summer has now been recovered by the Russians. Oleksandr’s unit had not slept for three days, he said, or left the front lines for eight months, and was involved in fierce fighting in the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar.
He said the Russian troops 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, according to the Pentagon, 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 that they would end up being used as “cannon fodder” by the Kremlin.
“When we catch them or see a body,” Oleksandr said, “then I’ll know for sure they’re here.”
Three weeks earlier, his unit had faced an attack by 40 armored vehicles and about 300 infantry soldiers, he said. Its drone commander, call sign “JS” for Java Script, said the unit killed 50 Russians that day. “The vehicles that managed to get through unloaded the infantry,” JS reported, “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 drone bombardment on the first day.”
This content was originally published in Ukrainian soldiers fight to maintain control of Kursk on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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