Four months after the Ukrainian offensive against the Russian region of Kursk, text messages from soldiers arrived BBC received paints a bleak picture.
The soldiers suffer from fatigue and insomnia due to terrifying 3,000 kg slide bombs. And now, as winter bites, the only silver lining they can see among the gray is Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The Ukrainian soldiers have lost their morale and the war is no longer even about capture. It’s about holding on, and the soldiers say, ‘we’re having a little trouble with that.’
While both Russia and Ukraine wait for newly elected President Trump to take office, the latter is trying to hold maximum territory until Trump’s inauguration. “The main task we face is to hold the maximum territory until Trump’s inauguration and the start of negotiations,” Dmytro said. ‘So that we can exchange it for something later. Nobody knows what.’
The only thing that remains constant, apart from the enormous pressure from the enemy, is the loss of motivation.
As the war has escalated, the US, Britain and France have all now allowed Ukraine to use long-range weapons in Russia, but that didn’t do much to improve their mood. “We live and fight here and now. And missiles fly somewhere else,” Dmytro added.
The soldiers said that even if Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles prove effective somewhere, these successes in the trenches would hardly mean anything. “We don’t talk about missiles. In the bunkers we talk about family and rotation. About simple things,” Marko said.
As for which North Korean troops would join the Russian side, the soldiers the BBC spoke to did not appear to be in contact. “I didn’t see or hear anything about Koreans, living or dead,” Andriy said.
The soldiers have been ordered to capture at least one North Korean soldier with documents. Apparently there are rewards like drones and leaves for anyone who successfully captures a North Korean soldier.
Ukrainian soldiers will hold out in Kursk “as long as this is feasible from a military point of view”, because it reaps military and political rewards for them and also because the situation in Kursk and the heavy losses for Russia “irritate Putin”.
The names in this article are not real.