While the soldiers fighting for Ukraine are trying to retain hundreds of square kilometers, which they seized in the Russian region of the fuck in August, some describe the face of relentless waves of determined North Korean troops, Russian units with improved tactics and Ukrainian their own struggle with shouting and sinking morality.
“Honestly, I don’t think we will be able to keep it for a long time,” said Chapi, a foreign fighter who spoke with the CBC in Sumy’s Northeast Ukraine region, about 15 km from the Russian border.
“What I hope is that they just freeze the lines for six months. Give politicians time to try and negotiate.”
Chapi, like other soldiers whom CBC News spoke with, was identified only after his call in accordance with the Ukrainian military rules.
He and other members of his assault unit describe the exacerbated situation along the Kursan Front, where there is not enough trunk or weapon to counter the Russian army, which has strengthened thousands of qualified North Korean soldiers.
When Ukraine seized the territory in a surprising incident in August 2024, she empowered the army and the Ukrainian public that was tired after seeing that Russia was still taking place in the southeast of the country.
But in recent months, Ukraine has lost the territory that lasted.
Chape, who has been fighting in Ukraine since 2022, says that with military short troops, mobilized men who lack experience desperately trying to fill in the voids on the front line, peace negotiations cannot come enough soon.
Kursk could be a negotiating chip
The last time Chapi described that this was scared during the fight for Bakhmut which lasted almost a year, while Russia sent a wave wave Wagner white white and convicted in the battle.
He says that the difference this time is that North Koreans are much better dressed, and Drone Warfare has progressed so quickly that the air threat is close to constant.
Ukrainian officials say they took the area in Kurska to create a tampon zone but now with US President Donald Trump Pushing to end the war, there are speculations that Kursk is also a negotiating chip that can be used in any future negotiations.
But only if Ukraine is held on it.
Chapi says many soldiers on the front line are now not the same caliber as before. Instead of volunteering in the fight, they were forced to recruit.
“Many of these people don’t want to be there. They just want to survive the war.”
“We are all tired,” he says soldering
Last April, the Ukrainian government reduced Age mobilization from 27 to 25. But US officials urge Ukraine to reduce it even more, which has so far resisted the government, claiming that the main issue of Ukraine is missing weapons rather than troops.
The 26-year-old soldier, who goes with a signature calls Google and fights together with Chapa, has just married and worked as a sales manager when he was assembled nine months ago.
“I want to go back to civil life quickly,” he told CBC News.
“We are all tired. We want peace.”
In December, the president of Ukraine said more than 42,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and hundreds of thousands of injured from the beginning of the full invasion.
While the Government claims that the Ukraine Army is 800,000, the General Prosecutor’s Office said it is more than more than 100,000 The soldiers have been charged with the Laws on the Dezer -Honor of the Earth since the beginning of the war in February 2022.
Ukrainian media reported that the investigation was launched 155. Mechanized Brigade for charges that 1,700 men had left even before the unit had entered the battle.
Inadequate training, the soldier reports
With exhausted ranks, at the end of last year Ukraine approved amnesty which would allow soldiers who went to AWOL to avoid punishment if they return to their units.
Voodoo, another foreign volunteer who works as a doctor and headquartered in Kurska, said a scattered facade, there are “good brigades, mediocre brigades and terrible brigades.”
He said that while Ukraine tries to provide new soldiers with a basic level of training, he believes that it is often inadequate and represents the “plot in the box” exercise.
He described that he was present at a recent course where the instructor began every lesson by telling the troupe to only pretend that there were no drones in heaven, which he said was completely unrealistic.
“Of course, I can pretend to fight on the moon or drive a unicorn, if you want. But it’s not a war where we fight,” he said.
“So why try even training?”
North Korean reinforcements
Experts believe that the number of Russian military deaths is significantly higher than Ukraine. Independent Russian journalists who followed the dead and wounded are evaluated by the number of dead, which will be about 150,000.
But Russia has a much larger population and now uses imported troops from North Korea.
Soldiers fighting for Ukraine said they hit how many small North Koreans saw on the battlefield they compared to the Russians, but they say they are obviously skilled and unwavering. He said their movements are more aggressive and their shooting is more precise.
Chapi says they use more men to launch an attack and said he was a witness to a group charges forward as the commander was screaming at them from behind.
“I don’t know what he was screaming, but I can tell you that it’s not like,” Okay, now he’s back, “he said.
“He was like sending, he sent them all the time. And that was after North Koreans took victims.”
Unlike the Russians, Google soldier said North Koreans take over all their dead. There are reports that as as many as 1,000 They were already killed in Kurska.
While Ukraine has captured two men who are now in custody in Kiev, Google says that the North Koreans he came to in were refusing to become prisoners of war.
He said he was personally a witness to some decisions to develop shells instead of being captured.
Dreams of going home
Google, who spoke with CBC during a three-day break, dreams of establishing a family and leaving the line for good, but waits for him to hear more about what Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelesskky have to say.
When asked what a peace agreement will support, he is not sure, but says that he may require peace forces from other countries that patrol the border and carry out a truce.
If this is part of the hypothetical agreement, Zelenskyy said that 200,000 soldiers would be required.
Yaryi, 25, another soldier from the same attacker who was previously MMA fighter before mobilization, said that there is only one way in which the peace agreement may function: if Russia withdraws from the territory that occupies, including the Crimea that was illegally annexed in 2014. years.
“If they get 20 percent of our territory, it’s not peace,” he said.
“They would just attack again in three or four years.”