Facing exhausted and exhausted North Korean forces, Ukrainian soldiers say the war must end

As soldiers fighting for Ukraine try to hold on to hundreds of square kilometers they captured in Russia’s Kursk region in August, some describe facing relentless waves of determined North Korean forces, Russian units with improved tactics, and a conflict in which Ukraine is exhausted and deteriorating. Morale.

“Honestly, I don’t think we’ll be able to hold it for much longer,” said Xavi, a foreign fighter who spoke to CBC in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine, about 15 kilometers from the Russian border.

“What I hope is that they freeze the lines for six months. And that they give the politicians time to try to negotiate.”

Xavi, like other soldiers CBC News spoke with, is identified only by his call sign according to Ukrainian military rules.

He and other members of his assault unit describe a deteriorating situation along the Kursk Front, where there are not enough troops or weapons to confront the Russian army backed by thousands of skilled North Korean soldiers.

When Ukraine seized the region in a surprise incursion in August 2024, it strengthened a Ukrainian military and public that had grown weary of seeing Russia continuing its territorial advance in the country’s southeast.

But in recent months, Ukraine has lost the territory it seized.

Xavi, who has been fighting in Ukraine since 2022, says that with military forces in short supply, and with mobilized and inexperienced men desperately trying to fill gaps on the front line, peace talks cannot come soon enough.

Your Kursk can be a bargaining chip

The last time Xavi described being this afraid was during the fight for Bakhmut Which lasted nearly a year, as Russia sent wave after wave of… Wagner mercenary fighters And those convicted in battle.

The difference this time, he says, is that the North Koreans are much better trained, and that drone warfare has advanced so quickly that the aerial threat has become almost constant.

Ukrainian officials say they seized the area in Kursk to create a buffer zone, but now nonetheless US President Donald Trump In order to end the war, there is speculation that Kursk is also a bargaining chip that can be used in any future negotiations.

But only if Ukraine sticks to it.

Chappie says many of the soldiers on the front lines now are not of the same caliber as they once were. Instead of volunteering to fight, they were forced to do so through compulsory conscription.

“A lot of these guys don’t want to be there. They just want to survive the war.”

“We are all tired,” Gendy says

Last April, the Ukrainian government reduced the interest rate The packing age is from 27 to 25. But US officials are urging Ukraine to reduce the amount of weapons further, which the government has so far resisted, arguing that the main issue in Ukraine is a lack of weapons, not troops.

The 26-year-old soldier, who uses the call sign Google and fights alongside Xavi, had just married and was working as a sales manager when he was drafted nine months ago.

“I want to get back to civilian life quickly,” he told CBC News.

“We are all tired. We want peace.”

In December, the Ukrainian president said that more than 42,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and hundreds of thousands wounded since the start of the large-scale invasion.

While the government asserts that the Ukrainian army consists of 800,000 soldiers, the Prosecutor General’s Office said that more than 800,000 soldiers. 100,000 The soldiers have been charged under the country’s desertion laws since the war began in February 2022.

Ukrainian media reported that an investigation had been opened into the 155th Mechanized Brigade over accusations that 1,700 men had left even before the unit entered battle.

The soldier reports: Training is insufficient

With its ranks exhausted, at the end of last year Ukraine was given a chance pardon Which would allow soldiers who went AWOL to escape punishment if they returned to their units.

Scattered across the front, there are “good brigades, average brigades, and terrible brigades,” said Vodo, another foreign volunteer medic based in Kursk.

He said that while Ukraine tries to provide new soldiers with a basic level of training, he believes it is often inadequate and amounts to a “box-ticking exercise.”

He described attending a recent training session where the instructor began each lesson by telling troops to pretend there were no drones in the sky, which he said was completely unrealistic.

“Sure, I can pretend I’m fighting on the moon, or riding a unicorn, if I want,” he said. “But that’s not the war we’re fighting.”

“So why do you even bother doing the training?”

North Korean reinforcements

Experts believe that the number of Russian military deaths is much greater than the number of deaths in Ukraine. Independent Russian journalists tracking the dead and wounded put the death toll at about 150,000.

But Russia has a larger population, and is now using troops imported from North Korea.

Soldiers fighting for Ukraine said they were amazed at how few North Koreans they saw on the battlefield compared to the Russians, but they say they are clearly skilled and unwavering. He said their movements are more aggressive and their shooting is more accurate.

Xavi says they are using more men to launch attacks, and said he saw a group moving forward while a leader shouted at them from behind.

He added: “I don’t know what he was shouting, but I can tell you he wasn’t saying, ‘Okay, come back now.'”

“He was sending them, sending them all the time. And this was after the North Koreans had suffered casualties.”

Unlike the Russians, Private Google said the North Koreans take back all their dead. There are some reports that Up to 1000 Some of them have already been killed at Kursk.

While Ukraine has Two men arrested Who are now detained in Kiev, Google says the North Koreans he met refuse to become prisoners of war.

He said he personally witnessed some people choosing to blow themselves up with grenades instead of being arrested.

Dreams of returning home

Google, who spoke to CBC during a three-day break, dreams of starting a family and leaving the front lines forever, but is waiting to hear more about what Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have to say.

When asked what kind of peace deal he would support, he said he was not sure but said it might require peacekeepers from other countries to patrol the border and enforce a ceasefire.

If that were part of a hypothetical deal, Zelensky said at least 200,000 troops would be needed.

Yari, 25, another soldier from the same assault squad who was previously a mixed martial arts fighter before being mobilized, said there is only one way the peace deal could succeed: if Russia withdraws from the territories it occupies, including the peninsula. Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014. .

He added: “If they get 20% of our lands, this is not peace.” “They will attack again in three or four years.”