Ukraine’s Kursk offensive was seen as a major success, but it came at a huge cost

Vasyl was several miles deep in Russian territory when he heard the whizz of an approaching drone loaded with explosives. He had seconds to react. “It was very quick. We ran to the trees and then there was a bang a meter or two away from me,” the Ukrainian soldier said.

“I look down and I see I have pieces of it in my leg. I don’t know what’s happening, so I put a tourniquet on and try to get out,” Vasyl – callsign Bumblebee – told CNN in Sumy, the northern Ukrainian city where he is recovering from his injuries.

Kyiv launched its surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last month, taking Moscow by surprise and quickly advancing some 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border. But the campaign slowed and, on Thursday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Russia had launched “counteroffensive actions.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense said Russian forces had “penetrated” into the Kursk region, capturing 10 settlements.

In the days leading up to this counter-attack, CNN spoke with 14 Ukrainian soldiers from five different units who were deployed to Kursk as part of the incursion. Four were wounded in the operation and are currently recovering in hospitals in Ukraine, while the other 10 are still conducting missions in Russia. They included infantrymen, members of a drone unit, armored vehicle drivers and sappers, or frontline combat engineers.

Most have asked to remain anonymous or be identified by their first name and callsign only, given the sensitive nature of the topic and security concerns.

All 14 said the Kursk counteroffensive was a difficult operation with casualty rates on par with other parts of the frontlines. They said it was getting tougher, five weeks in, and some even questioned the decision to launch the incursion at a time when Ukraine was struggling to defend key towns and cities in the east of the country.

“It will get more and more difficult. There will be more artillery fire, more soldiers, and there will be very big and difficult battles, but we must do everything we can that improves our position – Ukraine wants peace, but peace when we win, not when we lose,” Vasyl said.

“Russia is sending a lot of troops and artillery (to Kursk). We have a lot of guys who have been killed and we have a lot of destroyed hardware,” he added.

Ukrainian officials said Moscow has sent some 30,000 troops into the Kursk region. Two officers with knowledge of the situation said these reinforcements included soldiers from the now dissolved Wagner Private Military Company who the officers believed had been redeployed from West Africa.

The Wagner mercenaries were meant to be officially absorbed into the Russian military following the death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin last year. But the Ukrainian soldiers operating in Kursk said Wagner fighters were distinguishable from the rest of the Russian troops because they have much better equipment and are better trained than the regular soldiers.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov also claimed shortly after the start of the incursion that the Chechen special forces unit Akhmat was in the area.

Dmytro, Vasyl’s commander who oversees the Ukrainian Nightingale battalion, told CNN his unit had also found Wagner flags and insignia in the area – something other soldiers also confirmed.

While Russia has managed to reclaim control of some small settlements in recent days, Ukraine still controls the vast majority of the territory it took over in the first days of the incursion, according to an assessment by the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitoring group.

The Kursk operation has given the Ukrainians a huge morale boost, being Kyiv’s first big strategic gain since the liberation of Kherson in November 2022.

Nearly all of the soldiers CNN spoke with said that giving Russia a taste of its own medicine was worth the pain.

“It was a good feeling. Russia is one of the biggest countries by territory, by population, by the size of its military. And they have nuclear bombs. We don’t have a lot of people and we have been at war for 10 years, since Russia attacked us and occupied some parts of (the) Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” Vasyl said, referring to Moscow’s support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when Crimea was also illegally annexed by the Kremlin.

“And now we see that, even after (all) this time, we can attack (Russia’s) territory and say to all the world, ‘Don’t be scared. Be brave. Be strong and smart.’”

Dmytro, whose callsign is Kholod – or Cold in Ukrainian – gave a simple assessment: “F**k yes! That’s the feeling when I saw our tanks shooting at the Russian positions. They put their hands up, we took a lot of prisoners.”

In an exclusive interview with CNN last week, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi gave what was the most detailed explanation yet of the rationale behind the incursion. He said its aim was to stop Russia from using Kursk as a launchpad for a new offensive, to divert Moscow’s forces from other areas, to create a “security zone” and prevent cross-border shelling of civilians, to take prisoners of war and – indeed – to boost the morale of Ukraine’s troops and the nation overall.

Zelensky, meanwhile, said that another goal of the operation was to show Kyiv’s Western allies that with the right support, its military can fight back and eventually win the war.

Ukraine has been under pressure on its eastern front for most of this year and is still struggling to recover from the huge setbacks caused by delays in the delivery of US military assistance last winter and in the spring.

The Kursk offensive, which came as a surprise even to some of Ukraine’s closest allies, was hailed by Western officials. On Saturday, CIA director Bill Burns called it “a significant tactical achievement.” “It has not only been a boost in Ukrainian morale. It has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin’s Russia and of its military,” Burns said, speaking in London.

A big, tangible win was much needed, and welcomed, within Ukraine. But soldiers involved in the operation who spoke with CNN said it was a difficult undertaking.

One soldier, callsign Fin, said Russia’s fortifications were built very well, combining different types of defensive measures – for example by placing mines underneath the anti-tank obstacles known as dragon’s teeth.

His entire team – four men with years of experience – was completely exhausted, he said. They were among the first units to cross into Russia, tasked with demining and dismantling defenses before Ukrainian infantry and artillery units arrived there. They spent two weeks inside Kursk, working non-stop, catching a couple of hours of sleep here and there, always on alert.

There were many casualties, they said. One soldier pointed to his boots and said one could take “a lot of DNA samples” from them. “Ukrainian DNA, unfortunately,” he said.

Fin said that the fact that they were operating on foreign land, in an area they didn’t know, made their mission uniquely challenging. Most of the units taking part in the Kursk operation were redeployed from other parts of the frontline, from areas they have got to know extremely well over the past two and half years.

One crew member of an armored personnel carrier (APC) that was transporting Ukrainian infantry troops around the Kursk region told CNN his unit was sent there from Chasiv Yar, on the eastern frontline, where he could “drive blindfolded from one position to another.”

In Kursk, he and his crew got lost.

“We ended up going to (the Russian town of) Sudzha, where we had to wait for our commander to find us,” he said, adding poor visibility and the crew’s lack of knowledge of the terrain made navigation extremely difficult. Several units have told CNN that navigation and communication between units and their commanders were a major problem in Kursk.

With GPS and cellphone signals jammed, the Ukrainians have been relying on the Starlink internet service. But they are finding the service doesn’t work at all in certain parts of the Kursk region.

The APC crewmember said that these communication disruptions meant they couldn’t contact their commander for many hours.

The area has been experiencing drought for several months and the land is now very dry, which makes it even more challenging to move around in heavy vehicles that stir up the dust. The APC crew member and his commander spoke with CNN in northern Ukraine, where they were recuperating from injuries they said were sustained when two Ukrainian armored vehicles crashed into each other because of very poor visibility and no navigation signal.

If the line of control remains largely unchanged, the battle in the Kursk region could soon start to resemble parts of the frontline in eastern Ukraine, with both sides digging in and fighting hard for every inch of land.

One sapper said his unit’s mission in Kursk had changed dramatically recently. He spoke with CNN in a small village on the Ukrainian side of the border after coming back from a particularly grueling mission.

“If it was easy, you wouldn’t see the medical evacuation vehicles up and down the road,” one soldier told CNN while resting on the Ukrainian side of the border.

Just a few weeks ago, he and his team were removing Russian defenses and clearing minefields to enable Ukrainian infantry to advance deeper into Russia. Now, he said, they are doing the opposite: laying mines and preparing defenses aimed at stopping Russian troops from pushing back.

Like all the soldiers CNN spoke with, Vasyl and his commander, Kholod, had no idea they would end up going into Russia when they were redeployed to the Sumy region from Pokrovsk in the east.

“We all thought that the Russians were going to come here, because we didn’t have a lot of time. There was a meeting and my commander told me that we needed to be in Sumy in three days,” Kholod said.

“And then the day when it all started, I was in a meeting with other commanders and they showed me the map and told me what they are going to do, where they are going to drive, what they are going to ambush, and I understood we are going to Russia.”

Speaking to CNN, Vasyl said he didn’t think too much about the mission – or the fact he got injured in it – preferring to remain in the here-and-now.

“This is war. We are soldiers, and we must do all that we can to protect our country. This is part of a big plan and I haven’t questioned why I’m here.”

Sitting on a bench in Sumy, with his bandaged leg stretched out and an IV needle protruding from near his elbow, Vasyl said the frontline was swarming with explosive Russian drones on the day he was wounded. “Guys from another unit came by and I told them to be careful because it was like a drone slaughterhouse in there… and just that second, bang,” he said, adding a few expletives.

His mates told him he was lucky to survive. Kholod, who was one of the first to get to him after the blast, commended his calm demeanor after the attack.

Vasyl said that was just his nature. “The most important (thing) when you are very scared, is to be in control. If you can control your fear, everything will be all right,” he said.

The doctors told him it was too risky to remove some of the pieces of shrapnel.

“The doctor said that the pieces will stay in my body, they are too difficult to remove, it’s better if they stay. I say ‘OK , OK , you are the doctor,’” Vasyl told CNN, not batting an eyelid over the idea of living the rest of his life with remnants of Russian explosives stuck inside him.

“So what,” he added. “I’m not going to become a Russian from these pieces. It doesn’t work like with vampires!”