THE SOLDIERS chanted the Lord’s Prayer and clicked rosary beads as they advanced. For Ivan, 43, an old-timer from Ukraine’s 103rd brigade, the fighting inside Russia was just another day’s work. “Grenades and mortars look the same wherever you are.” The newest recruits were almost paralysed with fear. But the men tramped on together, 10km a day, crossing fields and railway lines, every night replacing forward units in hastily dug positions ahead of them. Three days, three hikes, three rotations. On the third night, the Russian glide bombs hit. “Everything was burning. Arms here, legs there”. Twelve men in the company died immediately. Ivan suffered shrapnel injuries to his groin and chest, and was evacuated to a hospital in the Sumy region of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s six-day-long operation inside Russia has progressed faster than many dared believe. A Ukrainian security source says that by Saturday August 10th, some units had moved a full 40km inside Russia towards the regional capital of Kursk. The attack, shrouded in secrecy, caught the Kremlin off-guard. Some 76,000 locals have fled and the Russian authorities have declared a state of emergency there. The absence of a well-organised evacuation has angered many. Vladimir Putin called it a large-scale “provocation”. Volodymyr Artiukh, the head of Ukraine’s military administration in Sumy, says the Ukrainian success represented a “cold shower” for the Russians. “They are feeling what we have been feeling for years, since 2014. This is a historical event.”
But the accounts from Ukraine’s wounded suggest it has not been a walk in the park, and remains risky. The hospital ward reeks of the sacrifice: soil, blood, and stale sweat. Foil burn-dressings line the corridor. In the yard, the patients, some wrapped like mummies from head to toe in bandages, smoke furiously. Angol, a 28-year-old paratrooper with the 33rd brigade, looks like a Christmas tree. His left arm is immobilised in a fixation device. Tubes, bags and wires protrude from his body. He was also about 30km into Russia when his luck ran out. He isn’t sure if it was artillery or a bomb that hit him. Maybe it was friendly fire; there was a lot of that. All he can remember is falling to the ground and shouting “300”, the code for wounded. The Russians had been on the run up to then, he insists, abandoning equipment and ammunition as fast as they could.
Other soldiers in the yard recall the demonic buzz of Russia’s skies. Ukraine has deployed a lot of air-defence and electronic-warfare assets to the area, but drones and aviation find ways through. Mykola, an infantryman who says he was in the first group to cross over into Russia, says pilots attacked as soon as they entered the first Russian village. At a second village, the group was targeted by helicopters. Mykola recalls throwing himself to the ground, and then the sound of a helicopter crashing, downed by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile. But close calls have consequences. The problem with throwing yourself to the ground at night is you can’t see where you’re falling, Mykola says. He broke a rib and had to be evacuated.
Some aspects of Ukraine’s operation appear to have been meticulously planned. Operational security delivered the element of surprise, a crucial aspect of warfare. “We sent our most combat-ready units to the weakest point on their border,” says a general-staff source deployed to the region. “Conscript soldiers faced paratroopers and simply surrendered.” But other aspects of the operation indicate a certain haste in preparation. All three soldiers quoted in this article were pulled, unrested, from under-pressure front lines in the east with barely a day’s notice.
The end goal of Ukraine’s operation still remains unclear: does it aim to push further, towards the city of Kursk? Is the plan to occupy part of the territory permanently, perhaps as a bargaining chip in negotiations, or does it intend to withdraw after causing Vladimir Putin maximum embarrassment? Ukraine does not appear to be reinforcing its positions in any serious sense. “Our calf demands a wolf,” the security source cautions, using a local saying to warn against overly ambitious objectives.
A minimum objective appears to be pulling troops away from Russia’s stranglehold in Kharkiv and Donbas, the main focuses of the war. On early evidence, the results are inconclusive. Russia has shifted troops from the Kharkiv front, but so far it has moved far fewer from the vital Donbas front. “Their commanders aren’t idiots,” says the Ukrainian general-staff source. “They are moving forces, but not as quickly as we would like. They know we can’t extend logistics 80 or 100 km.”
The source cautions against comparing the Kursk incursion to Ukraine’s successful swift recapture of much of Kharkiv province in late 2022. The Russian army is taking the war more seriously now, he says: “The danger is we’ll fall into a trap, and Russia will grind our teeth down.” On Sunday Russia’s defence ministry claimed, albeit not for the first time, that it had “thwarted” attempts by Ukrainian forces to break deeper into Russia.
The mathematics of war have never favoured Ukraine, which must husband its limited resources, and an assault deep inside undefended Russian territory risks making the situation worse. But the operation has already improved the one crucial intangible—morale—that has allowed Ukraine to cheat the odds for nearly three years now. Whether in government offices in Kyiv, or in front-line hospitals treating the wounded, the nation believes it has uncovered a vulnerability in Vladimir Putin’s armour. Tired, dirty and exhausted, the soldiers say they regret no part of the risky operation that has already killed scores of their comrades: they would rejoin it in a heartbeat. “For the first time in a long time we have movement,” says Angol. “I felt like a tiger.” ■
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