Kyiv, Ukraine — While Ukrainian forces are in Russia’s western Kursk region, they are encountering a new enemy, North Korea’s elite soldiers.
On Sunday, Ukrainian infantry and armoured vehicles resumed an offensive in three directions in Kursk, trying to fence their toehold in the district centre of Sudzha that they had seized in August.
By Tuesday, they occupied at least three villages northeast of Sudzha – and inflicted losses on the North Koreans that fight in separate units under Russian command.
“We have clarified their ranks: they have losses, Kim has 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 U. S. officials said Kim had deployed more than 10,000 elite troops to Kursk. Hundreds of other people have already been killed there.
More than 450 km (280 miles) south of Kursk, the Ukrainian military continues to retreat waves of Russian squadrons near the Southeast Pokrovsk key.
“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 stay pushing. The only challenge they have is their team, they can’t launch it as they did 3 or 4 months ago,” he said.
But the biggest challenge that his unity, like all the armed forces of Ukraine, face a disastrous work shortage.
Last week, the Ukrainian troops withdrew from the eastern city of Kurakhove, whose Russian troops said Monday.
kyiv’s forces have also lost a key coal mine near Pokrovsk and can be about to lose the largest lithium tank in Ukraine in Shevchenkove.
“Kurakhove’s defense comforts resumed just because we had no one there,” said the soldier. “Maximum motivated infantry men were 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’ve been wounded so many times because of the commanders’ stupidity,” he said.
Russian forces that seized Kurakhove are looting deserted apartments, an alleged location.
“They are heading to apartments that have not broken down the bombing, they are stealing everything they can remove,” said Olena Basenko, a former Kurakhove sales employee who is for her old aunt who refused to leave the city, told Al Jazeera
“Some” Libertadores “are,” he said about Moscow’s commitment to “free” Ukraine from the “Neonazi Board” of President Volodimir Zelenski-Russian affirmations that have been demystified everything related to war.
Ukraine’s arduous work shortage has led some analysts to doubt kyiv’s impulse to resume Kursk’s offensive.
“Zelenskyy’s strategy is to amass brigades with equipment in the rear only to solemnly lose them in the land of Kursk to gain 1.5km [1 mile] of farmland,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.
The sets that advance in Kursk may have used to protect Kurakhove, he said.
However, others see Kursk’s offensive as a possibility to ensure a vital negotiation problem.
Ukraine can visit a Russian nuclear force plant in the city of Kurchatov, which is around 70 km (45 miles) to the northeast of Southzha and can see to capture the regional capital of Kursk 30 km (20 miles) further.
On the occasion of success, the acquisition of Kurchatov may be a vital strategic gain, according to the former deputy leader of the Ukrainian staff of the Armed Forces.
“We don’t wish to make things worse, but we do,” Lt. Gen. Ihor Romanenko told Al Jazeera.
Kyiv may also invade Russia’s neighboring Bryansk region, a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s domestic reputation, he said.
“It will be painful in Putin, and if there is an offensive somewhere in Bryansk or in regions, it will make you think,” Romanenko said.
Some Russians ridicule Putin who led to the first foreign invasion of western Russia since World War II.
“If the grandpa from the bunker is so wise, why do we have Ukrainians on Russian land? Something must be wrong,” Roman, a 48-year-old Muscovite who served in a tank unit in the 1990s, told Al Jazeera, deriding the Russian president.
Bryansk borders Ukraine and has been repeatedly attacked by two Ukrainian military units made up of pro-Ukrainian Russian fighters.
Romanenko said that Putin’s resolution on Russia’s offensive in southeast Ukraine means 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 on the plan, but, according to his team, he would possibly come with the creation of a “demilitarized area” along the existing front line, the transfer of occupied spaces through kyiv of occupied spaces through of Russia and a winery at the NATO club in Ukraine.
At the end of last year, Ukraine won a small victory that may herald massive losses in the basics of Russian Navy and Civil seaports.
On December 31, Ukrainian sea drones, or unmanned boats armed with small missiles, attacked Russian helicopters in Séebastopol Bay, the naval base of annexed Crimea.
Ukraine said he had shot two helicopters, killing team members.
Moscow acknowledged no losses but said its forces destroyed four Ukrainian unmanned aircraft and two sea drones.
The attack has shown that marine drones can wreak havoc on Russian port and naval infrastructure along 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 ongoing war of attrition tests Ukraine and Russia’s economies.
The Russian economy has been “partially adapted to the tension of the [Western] sanctions, however, it is entering the inflationary surprise of overheating and deceleration in growth” lately due to the main percentage rates of the Central Bank, an analyst declared Aleksey Kusch, in Kyiv.
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.
“This creates a safe effect of parity amid war resistance,” Kushch told Al Jazeera.