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A Ukrainian commander says Russia is fighting a tougher battle in Kursk.
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His troops struggled to defeat an 80-man Russian force, he told The Wall Street Journal.
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Thousands of Russian troops have been transferred to Kursk, officials said.
A commander of a Ukrainian drone battalion says Russia is waging a stronger fight in Kursk and sending well-equipped soldiers to the region.
The commander of the 14th Regiment of Ukraine, which uses the call sign Cold, said The Wall Street Journal His units struggled to repel an 80-strong Russian force earlier this week, following a barrage of 21 glide bombs on the Ukrainian-held village.
“We pay a price too,” he told the Journal.
According to the outlet, the commander’s units were among the first to reach Kursk earlier this month.
They are now buried in cellars north of the city of Sudzha and are being used for reconnaissance and attack drones to help Ukrainian forces advance, the report said.
“We want to bring the war to their soil,” the commander told the Journal.
Since the surprise attack on Russia’s Kursk region on August 6, Ukraine has been say The troops have captured over 1,200 square kilometers of Russian territory and are advancing further into Russia.
Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Tuesday that the Ukrainian armed forces 22 miles to Russia.
The invasion caught Russia by surprise, which has struggled to respond quickly and effectively to the attack, partly because of its complex military structures and a lack of contingency plans.
Earlier this week, the Journal published reported that a Russian general had disbanded a group tasked with guarding the Kursk borders months before the surprise Ukrainian invasion, citing an anonymous Russian security official. This had left the border region vulnerable.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has continued its offensive and destroyed at least two bridges in Kursk and get off pontoon bridges before they can even be built.
However, Ukraine’s operations have slowed this week, with soldiers making only “marginal” progress on Wednesday, the Institute for the Study of War said said.
Cold told the Journal that Russia has sent well-equipped troops to the region, some of whom have significant combat experience.
He said he could see from drone footage how some Russian troops were fortifying and taking up defensive positions along a newly drawn front line, in anticipation of a prolonged conflict.
American officials told CNN Last week it seemed that Russia would send thousands of troops from Ukraine to Kursk.
It is still unclear exactly how many soldiers Russia is sending to Kursk, from the 965-kilometer-long front line in eastern Ukraine.
In a update On Sunday, the Institute for the Study of War reported that Russian moves from Ukraine to Kursk could weaken Russia’s ability to sustain offensive operations on the main front.
However, according to government sources close to the Russian presidential administration, Kursk may not be the Kremlin’s priority at the moment.
The sources told an independent Russian news agency Medusa that the Kremlin is using propaganda to convince the Russians to delay the recapture of Kursk until after an “inevitable” Ukrainian defeat in eastern Ukraine.
Due to the scale of the conflict, neither Russia nor Ukraine can win the war with a single decisive campaign, the Institute for the Study of War said on Sunday.
Read the original article at Company Insider
