By Manuel Ausloos and Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) – When Mariia Pankova final exchanged messages along with her shut good friend Pavlo in December, she had no concept that he was among the many Ukrainian troops preventing in Russia’s Kursk area.
She came upon when a fellow soldier instructed her a number of days later that her good friend, Pavlo Humeniuk, 24, a fight engineer in Ukraine’s forty seventh Magura brigade, had gone lacking close to the village of Novoivanivka in Kursk on December 6.
Nearly 4 months have handed and there was no additional details about Pavlo’s destiny, Pankova instructed Reuters, citing her conversations together with his kin. She retains looking on Telegram and Fb hoping to seek out out whether or not he’s lifeless or alive.
Pankova, 25, believes the price of Ukraine’s dangerous incursion into Russia might have been too excessive. The sentiment is shared by many others in Ukraine, particularly after troops retreated from most of Kursk this month following weeks of heavy preventing.
“I am simply undecided it was price it,” she mentioned, massive teardrops operating down her face when speaking about her lacking good friend, who she bonded with over their shared love of climbing in Ukraine’s mountains.
“We’re not invaders. We simply want our territories again, we don’t want the Russian one.”
In response to questions for this story, Ukraine’s armed forces Normal Workers mentioned the offensive was meant to place stress on Moscow, to divert Russian forces from different fronts and to stop Russian cross-border assaults on neighbouring elements of Ukraine.
The operation “achieved most of its targets”, the Normal Workers mentioned.
Kyiv’s assault on Kursk in August took Russia, and the world, unexpectedly. It was the most important assault on sovereign Russian territory for the reason that Nazi invasion of 1941.
As Ukrainian troopers smashed into the Kursk area, largely unopposed, they rapidly seized some 1,376 sq. kilometres (531 sq. miles) of Russian territory.
However wanting troops, inside weeks the world underneath Ukraine’s management shrank to a slim wedge.
Kyiv used a few of its high marine and air assault forces however the grouping was by no means massive sufficient to have the ability to maintain on to a bigger space.
“From the very starting, logistics was critically difficult as a result of as we entered the Kursk area, we ensured adequate depth however we didn’t guarantee adequate width,” mentioned Serhiy Rakhmanin, a Ukrainian lawmaker on the parliament’s committee for safety and defence.
From the beginning, Russia had a manpower benefit alongside the Kursk frontline.
However the state of affairs grew to become essential late final 12 months. Russia introduced in elite items and high drone forces as reinforcements, aided by North Korean forces. They tightened assaults round Ukrainian flanks and superior to inside firing vary of a key provide street, in accordance with reviews from Ukrainian army bloggers near the armed forces.
“They not solely elevated the variety of their group opposing our army, however additionally they improved its high quality,” Rakhmanin mentioned. Russian President Vladimir Putin has by no means acknowledged the function of the North Koreans on the battlefield.
‘NO LOGIC’
Russia’s retaking of the Kursk area removes a possible bargaining chip for Ukraine simply as U.S. President Donald Trump undertakes talks to finish the conflict with Russia, which holds round a fifth of Ukraine’s nationwide lands.
Ukraine’s retreat from the Kursk metropolis of Sudzha, confirmed by Kyiv on March 16, prompted questions and deepened the general public divide in Ukraine on the advantages of the incursion.
Soldier Oleksii Deshevyi, 32, a former grocery store safety guard who misplaced his hand whereas preventing in Kursk in September, mentioned he noticed no logic within the operation.
“We must always not have began this operation in any respect,” he instructed Reuters in a rehabilitation centre in Kyiv, the place he has spent the previous six months adjusting to life after damage.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has acknowledged his army is in a tough place in Kursk and that he expects continued assaults from Russia because it makes an attempt to push the remaining Ukrainian forces out of the area.
Nonetheless, he has denied claims by Putin and Trump that his forces are surrounded. U.S. intelligence assessments additionally state Kyiv’s troops are usually not encircled.
The Russian forces at the moment are sending small assault teams to attempt to break by means of the Ukrainian border within the Sumy area, and may additionally be readying for a much bigger assault there, Ukrainian army analysts mentioned.
In public feedback made to Putin, Russia’s chief of Normal Workers, Valery Gerasimov final week confirmed his troops’ latest incursions into Sumy. He detailed what he mentioned have been heavy Ukrainian losses in Kursk.
At the same time as Ukraine shifted to a defensive operation, its targets included “management over the territory of the Russian Federation, exhaustion of the enemy, destruction of its personnel and pulling again its reserves,” Ukraine’s Normal Workers mentioned.
It added that almost 1,000 Russian troopers have been taken prisoner, a few of whom have been swapped for Ukrainian prisoners.
Due to the operation, Moscow needed to create three new groupings, totalling about 90,000 troopers, in addition to 12,000 North Korean servicemen, the Normal Workers mentioned.
Reuters couldn’t independently confirm these claims.
RISKY GAMBLE
Even initially, some criticised it as a dangerous gamble.
Viktor Muzhenko, former head of Ukraine’s Normal Workers, wrote in August 2024 that Ukraine ought to “concentrate on defending its key territories, avoiding unpredictable dangerous operations that might divert consideration from predominant threats, and select types and strategies of utilizing troops which might be enough to their capabilities.”
Nonetheless, some in Ukraine hailed the operation as a black eye for Russia.
Talking on March 12, Oleksander Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, mentioned the operation diverted and killed a few of Russia’s finest troops.
Lawmaker Rakhmanin mentioned it additionally offered a much-needed enhance to morale in Ukraine after Russia made territorial advances there in 2024 and showcased Ukraine’s capability to conduct profitable offensive operations.
Whereas Trump negotiates with Putin for an finish to the conflict, Pankova remembered her good friend Pavlo and solid doubt over the opportunity of a peace deal that prevented Russia from later taking extra Ukrainian territory.
She was pondering of becoming a member of the armed forces, she mentioned.
“Each time that somebody tries to, for instance, promote some piece of Ukraine, they simply have to not overlook what we already gave. What number of lives our folks gave for that.
(Reporting by Manuel Ausloos and Olena Harmash in Kyiv; Extra reporting by Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey; Modifying by Frank Jack Daniel)
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