kyiv, Ukraine – while the Ukrainian forces are found in the Russian Western region of Kursk, they find a new enemy, of the elite soldiers of North Korea.
On Sunday, Ukrainian infantry and armored cars resumed a three-way offensive in Kursk, to encircle their feet in the center of the Sudzha district they had taken in August.
On Tuesday, they occupied at least 3 villages northeast in Southzha and inflicted losses on North Koreans fighting in the separate Russian command.
“We have clarified their ranks: they have losses, even if Kim not only sent soldiers,” said a Ukrainian soldier in Al Jazeera, referring to the North Korean leader Kim Jong a.
He did not disclose his name, details and exact whereabouts of the battles in accordance with wartime regulations.
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 progress 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 challenge his unit, like all of Ukraine’s armed forces, is a disastrous shortage of work.
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 would possibly be about to waste the largest lithium tank in Ukraine in Shevchenkove.
“Kurakhove’s defense facilities have taken over just because we didn’t have there,” said the military. “Maximum motivated infantry men have been killed, new ones lack education and motivation. “
He also cited bad decisions made through commanders, claiming that they sought to appease their superiors and not enjoy the lives of army personnel.
“I have been hurt so many times by the stupidity of the commanders,” he said.
The Russian forces that seized Kurakhove are looting abandoned apartments, a local woman alleged.
“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 ‘liberators’ they are,” she said sarcastically referring to Moscow’s pledge to “liberate” Ukraine from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “neo-Nazi junta” – Russian claims that have been debunked throughout the war.
Ukraine’s shortage of manpower has led some analysts to doubt Kyiv’s push to resume the Kursk 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 been used to protect Kurakhove, he said.
Others, however, see the Kursk offensive as a chance to unload a negotiating program.
Ukraine can visit a Russian nuclear force plant in the city of Kurchatov, which is about 70 km (45 miles) to the northeast of Sudzha and can consult the regional capital of Kursk at 30 km (20 miles) away.
On the occasion of success, the acquisition of Kourtchatov can only a vital strategic gain, according to the former attached leader of the general personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
“We didn’t want to make things worse, but we need to,” Lieutenant General 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 him think,” said Romanenko.
Some Russians ridicule Putin that have led to the first foreign invasion of western Russia since World War II.
“If the bunker grandfather is so wise, why do we have Ukrainians on Russian soil?”Something’s right,” said Roman, a 48-year-old muscovite who served in a tanned unit in the 1990s at Al Jazeera, making the Russian president laugh.
Bryansk borders Ukraine and has been attacked through two sets of the Ukrainian army formed by Pro-Ukrainian Russian combatants.
Romanenko said Putin’s decision to ramp up Russia’s offensive in southeastern Ukraine signifies a “fiasco” of Trump’s “peace plan”.
“This ended in a fiasco because Putin rejected the proposed edition through the Trump 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 in the Ukraine NATO membership.
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, the Ukrainian sea drones or unleashed ships armed with small missiles, attacked Russian helicopters in the Bay of Sébastopol, the naval base of the Crimea Annexed.
Ukraine said it had fired on two helicopters, killing team members.
Moscow recognized any victim that his forces had destroyed 4 Ukrainian planes and two marine drones.
The attack showed that sea drones could wreak havoc on Russian port and naval infrastructure along the Black Sea, Bremen University’s Mitrokhin said.
In addition, Kiev can use marine drones for attacks opposed to the Russian military in the Baltic, the Barents and White Seas and in the Pacific.
“There is so much infrastructure there that it will be tricky to cover it even with boom barriers, let alone from all sides like in Sevastopol or Feodosiya,” he said.
Meanwhile, the ongoing war of attrition tests Ukraine and Russia’s economies.
The Russian economy has “partially adapted to the tension of [western] sanctions, however, it enters lately in the surprise of overheating inflation and slower growth” due to the main percentage rates of the central bank, said Aleksey Kusch, kyiv analyst.
The Ukrainian economy is “in a state of shock” due to an infrastructure to be able to be serious and a lack of work, he said.
But the assistance of hydrocarbons exports to the Russian economy of shock, while Ukraine remains afloat through Western monetary aid.
“This creates a safe effect of parity amid war resistance,” Kushch told Al Jazeera.