The dawn assault inside Russia’s Kursk region never even got to a gunfight, yet betrayed the intensity of the battle in Kremlin territory. Five Russians edged forward in the grey Sunday dawn but, as thermal drone imagery shows, were killed or wounded by a drone as they tried to hide in the treeline.
“I have this impression that (the Russians) have unlimited people,” said Oleksandr, a unit commander with the 225th assault battalion, describing the clash from 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. No one tells them anything about it, and no one comes back.”
Oleksandr and two colleagues with whom he is sitting are hard of hearing from the constant shelling. They provide a rare insight into the nearly four-month-long Ukrainian occupation of Kursk.
The August invasion marked a rare tactical success and strategic gain for Kyiv, although the use of significant manpower and armor in the assault has led to criticism that shortages created by the invasion contributed to Russia’s advance across the Donbas eastern front.
Advocates of the Kursk operation suggest it provided Kyiv with vital leverage for any future peace talks – perhaps initiated by US President-elect Donald Trump – which means Ukraine needs to retain a foothold in the area into spring at the least.
Oleksandr expressed confidence his unit could hold on, but less certainty as to 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 hold on to it until a certain point, we will.”
Asked what his message for Trump would be, Oleksandr demanded the West uphold the security guarantees it gave Ukraine in return for Kyiv 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 Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan assurances for giving up their Soviet-era nuclear weapons.
“You took away our nuclear weapons? You promised us your roof,” Oleksandr said, using a slang word for protection. “Keep your word. We’re being slaughtered, and you’re still trying to play games, 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 US or England, who are pissing themselves in front of Russia? Pardon my English,” he said laughing, in explanation of his profanity.
Recent Russian assaults in his area of Kursk have proven as ineffective as costly, he said. Separately, Ukrainian officials have admitted that 40% of the territory they took in the late summer has since been reclaimed by the Russians. Oleksandr’s unit has not slept for three days, he said, or left the frontline for eight months, and has been involved in ferocious combat in the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar.
He said the Russian troops Ukrainians faced in Kursk were a mixture of well-trained paratroopers from the 76th Brigade, but also less organised Chechens, and African mercenaries. But he has seen no sign of the 12,000 North Korean troops that, according to the Pentagon, have been sent to Kursk. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky also told the Japanese Kyodo news agency Sunday that some North Koreans had been killed by Ukrainian forces and that they would ultimately be used as “cannon fodder” by the Kremlin.
“When we catch them or see a body,” Oleksandr said, “then I’ll know for sure that they’re here.”
Three weeks earlier, his unit had faced an assault from 40 armored vehicles and about 300 infantry, he said. His drone commander, callsign “JS” for Java Script, said the unit killed 50 Russians that day. “The vehicles that managed to get through unloaded the infantry,” JS recounted, “then we finished off the infantry. And it went like this for nearly 24 hours, no sleep, and the next day we finished off those who managed to hide from the drone-bombing on the first day.”