Four months after Ukraine’s attack on the Russian region of Kursk, text messages from soldiers obtained by the BBC paint a bleak picture.
The soldiers are exhausted and suffering from insomnia due to the terrifying 3,000 kg glide bombs. And now, as winter sets in, they can see the only ray of hope amidst the gray – the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Ukrainian troops are demoralized and the war is no longer about capture. It’s about to be captured, and the soldiers say, “We’re struggling with it a little.”
While both Russia and Ukraine wait for President-elect Trump to take office, Ukraine is trying to capture maximum territory until Trump’s inauguration. “The main task before us is to capture the maximum territory until Trump’s inauguration and the start of negotiations,” Dmytro said. “To replace it with something later. No one knows what.”
Apart from the immense pressure from the enemy, one thing that remains constant is the loss of motivation.
As the war escalated, the US, Britain and France have now allowed Ukraine to use long-range weapons inside Russia, but this has not affected their morale. “We live and fight here and now. And missiles fly somewhere else,” Dmytro said.
Soldiers said that even though ATACs and Storm Shadow missiles proved effective elsewhere, these successes hardly mattered in the trenches. “We don’t talk about missiles. In the bunkers we talk about family and rotations. About simple things,” Marco said.
The soldiers the BBC spoke to regarding North Korean soldiers leaving to join the Russian side appear to have no contact with them. “I haven’t seen or heard anything about Koreans, living or dead,” Andrey said.
The soldiers have been told to capture at least one North Korean soldier with documents. Apparently, rewards like drones and vacations are offered to anyone who successfully captures a North Korean soldier.
Ukrainian troops will remain in Kursk “as long as it is possible from a military point of view”, as this is giving them military and political benefits and at the same time the Kursk situation and heavy losses for Russia are “upsetting Putin”.
The names given in this article are not real.
