Kyiv, Ukraine – As Ukrainian forces fight in the western Russian region of Kursk, they are encountering a new enemy – elite North Korean servicemen.
On Sunday, the Ukrainian infantry and armored cars resumed an offensive in 3 instructions in Kursk, to close the toe in the center of the Southzha district that they had seized in August.
On Tuesday, they occupied at least 3 villages northeast of Sudzha and inflicted casualties on North Koreans fighting in the separate Russian command.
“We have reduced their ranks: they have losses, Kim not only sent common soldiers,” a Ukrainian soldier told Al Jazeera, referring to the North Korean leader Kim Jong un.
He revealed his name, the main points and his precise position of the battles according to war times.
South Korean and US officials have said Kim deployed more than 10,000 elite soldiers to Kursk. Hundreds are understood to have been killed there already.
More than 450km (280 miles) south of Kursk, another Ukrainian serviceman keeps repelling waves of Russian infantrymen near the key southeastern city of Pokrovsk.
“It seems they are sending a new brigade every day,” the soldier told Al Jazeera.
The Russians continue to advance despite the lack of tanks and armored vehicles.
“They continue to press. The only challenge they have is their equipment, they release it as they did 3 or 4 months ago,” he said.
But the biggest problem his unit – as well as all of Ukraine’s armed forces – faces is a dire shortage of manpower.
Last week, Ukrainian troops withdrew from the eastern city of Kurakhove, which Russian troops claimed on Monday.
kyiv’s forces have also lost a key coal mine near Pokrovsk and can be about to lose the largest lithium tank in Shevchenkove.
“Kurakhove’s defense comforts were taken just because we had no one there,” said the soldier. “Maximum motivated infantry men have been killed, the new ones lack and motivation. “
He also cited bad decisions made through the commanders, claiming that they were looking to appease their superiors and did not appreciate the life of the military.
“I have been hurt so many times by the stupidity of the commanders,” he said.
Russian forces that seized Kurakhove are looting deserted apartments, an alleged location.
“They are heading to apartments that have broken through the bombing, they fly everything they can remove,” said Olena Basenko, a former Kurakhove sales employee who is looking for her old aunt who refused to leave the city, she told Al Jazeera
“Some” liberators “are,” he told Moscow’s commitment to Ukraine “free” of the “Naonazie Board” of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy-Russia Russia that all war has been demystified.
Ukraine’s dearth of hard work has led some analysts to doubt Kyiv’s push to take over the Kursk offensive.
“Zelenskyy’s strategy is composed of brigades with devices at the rear to lose it solemnly in Kursk’s country to win 1. 5 km [1 mile] of agricultural lands,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher of the German University of Bremen, in Al Jazeera.
The units that are advancing in Kursk could instead have been used to defend Kurakhove, he said.
Others, however, see the Kursk offensive as a chance to unload a negotiating program.
Ukraine would possibly consult a Russian nuclear force plant in the city of Kurchatov that is about 70 km (45 miles) northeast of Sudzha and can also try only the regional capital of Kursk at 30 km (20 miles) further.
If successful, the takeover of Kurchatov may become a significant strategic gain, according to the former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces.
“We didn’t want to make things worse, but we need to,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko told Al Jazeera.
kyiv can also invade Bryansk’s neighboring region, a blow to the internal reputation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said.
“It will be painful in Putin, and if there is an offensive somewhere in Bryansk or in regions, it will make him think,” said Romanenko.
Some Russians ridicule Putin’s policies that led to the first foreign invasion of western Russia since World War II.
“If the grandfather of the bunker is so wise, why do we have Ukrainians in Russian land? Something is wrong,” Roman, a 48 -year -old muscovite that served in a tank unit in the 1990s, to the jazeera, mocking the Russian president.
Bryansk borders Ukraine and has been attacked through two sets of the Ukrainian army formed by Pro-Ukrainian Russian combatants.
Romanenko said Putin’s resolution to reinforce Russia’s offensive in southeastern Ukraine, a “Fiasco” of Trump’s “peace plan”.
“This approach ended with a fiasco because Putin rejected the version proposed by Trump’s team,” he said.
Trump presented few main points in the plan, but, according to his team, he can come with the creation of a “demilitarized area” along the existing front line, the transfer of the spaces occupied through kyiv of the occupied spaces Through Russia and one stay at the NATO Ukraine Club.
At the end of last year, Ukraine won a small victory that can announce massive losses in the basic concepts of the Navy and Civil Ports of Russia.
On December 31, the Ukrainian sea drones, or unmanned vessels armed with small missiles, attacked Russian helicopters in Sevastopol’s bay, the naval base of Crimea Annex.
Ukraine claimed to have demolished two helicopters, killing all team members.
Moscow recognized any loss still said that their forces had destroyed 4 Ukrainian planes and two marine drones.
The attack showed that marine drones can wreak havoc in the Russian port and naval infrastructure throughout the Black Sea, said Mitrokhin of the University of Bremen.
Furthermore, Kyiv could use sea drones for attacks on the Russian navy in the Baltic, Barents and White Seas and in the Pacific.
“There is as much infrastructure there that it will be difficult to cover it even with boom barriers, to mention them from all sides as in Sevastopol or [the port of Crimea de] Feodosiya,” said -ali.
Meanwhile, the wear war tries the economies of Ukraine and Russia.
The Russian economy “has partially adjusted to the stress of [Western] sanctions, however, it is lately entering the inflation surprise of overheating and slower growth” due to the central bank’s headline percentage rates, said Aleksey Kusch, a Kiev-based analyst.
The Ukrainian economy is “in a state of shock” due to a serious power infrastructure and a lack of jobs, he said.
But hydrocarbon exports help Russia’s economy recover from the shock, while Ukraine is kept afloat by Western financial aid.
“It creates a sure parity effect in the midst of war resistance,” Kushch told Al Jazeera.