World
‘We didn’t have anybody there’: Kyiv’s troops struggle as Russia advances
Kyiv, Ukraine – As Ukrainian forces fight in the western Russian region of Kursk, they are encountering a new enemy – elite North Korean servicemen.
On Sunday, Ukrainian infantry and armoured vehicles resumed an offensive in three directions in Kursk, trying to fence their toehold in the district centre of Sudzha that they had seized in August.
By Tuesday, they occupied at least three villages northeast of Sudzha – and inflicted losses on the North Koreans that fight in separate units under Russian command.
“We thinned their ranks – they have losses, although Kim didn’t just send ordinary servicemen,” a Ukrainian soldier told Al Jazeera, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
He did not disclose his name, details and exact whereabouts of the battles in accordance with wartime regulations.
South Korean and US officials have said Kim deployed more than 10,000 elite soldiers to Kursk. Hundreds are understood to have been killed there already.
More than 450km (280 miles) south of Kursk, another Ukrainian serviceman keeps repelling waves of Russian infantrymen near the key southeastern city of Pokrovsk.
“Looks like they send a new brigade every day,” the serviceman told Al Jazeera.
Russians keep advancing despite a reported lack of tanks and armoured vehicles.
“They keep pushing. The only problem they have is their equipment, they can’t throw it around the way they did three or four months ago,” he said.
But the biggest problem his unit – as well as all of Ukraine’s armed forces – faces is a dire shortage of manpower.
Last week, Ukrainian troops retreated from the eastern town of Kurakhove, which Russian troops claimed control of on Monday.
Kyiv’s forces have also lost a key coal mine near Pokrovsk and could be about to lose Ukraine’s biggest lithium deposit in Shevchenkove.
“The Kurakhove defence installations have been taken over just because we didn’t have anybody there,” the serviceman said. “The most motivated soldiers have been killed, the new ones lack training and motivation.”
He also cited poor decisions made by commanding officers, alleging they want to appease their superiors and do not value the lives of servicemen.
“I’ve been wounded so many times because of the commanders’ stupidity,” he said.
Russians ‘looting’ in Donetsk town
The Russian forces that seized Kurakhove are looting abandoned apartments, a local woman alleged.
“They’re breaking into apartments that haven’t been damaged by shelling, they steal everything they can carry away,” Olena Basenko, a former sales clerk from Kurakhove who is looking for her elderly aunt who refused to leave the town, told Al Jazeera.
“Some ‘liberators’ they are,” she said sarcastically referring to Moscow’s pledge to “liberate” Ukraine from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “neo-Nazi junta” – Russian claims that have been debunked throughout the war.
Ukraine’s shortage of manpower has led some analysts to doubt Kyiv’s push to resume the Kursk offensive.
“Zelenskyy’s strategy is to amass brigades with equipment in the rear only to solemnly lose them in the land of Kursk to gain 1.5km [1 mile] of farmland,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.
The units that are advancing in Kursk could instead have been used to defend Kurakhove, he said.
However, others see the Kursk offensive as a chance to gain an important bargaining chip.
Ukraine may try to seize a Russian nuclear power plant in the town of Kurchatov that lies about 70km (45 miles) northeast of Sudzha and could attempt to seize Kursk’s regional capital 30km (20 miles) farther away.
If successful, the takeover of Kurchatov may become a significant strategic gain, according to the former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces.
“We didn’t want to make things worse, but we need to,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko told Al Jazeera.
Kyiv may also invade the nearby Russian region of Bryansk, dealing a heavy blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s domestic reputation, he said.
“It will be painful to Putin, and if there is an offensive somewhere in Bryansk or some other regions, it will make him think,” Romanenko said.
Some Russians ridicule Putin’s policies that led to the first foreign invasion of western Russia since World War II.
“If the grandpa from the bunker is so wise, why do we have Ukrainians on Russian land? Something must be wrong,” Roman, a 48-year-old Muscovite who served in a tank unit in the 1990s, told Al Jazeera, deriding the Russian president.
Bryansk borders Ukraine and has been repeatedly attacked by two Ukrainian military units made up of pro-Ukrainian Russian fighters.
Romanenko said Putin’s decision to ramp up Russia’s offensive in southeastern Ukraine signifies a “fiasco” of Trump’s “peace plan”.
“This approach ended with a fiasco because Putin rejected the version proposed by Trump’s team,” he said.
Trump has offered few details of the plan, but, according to his team, it may include the establishment of a “demilitarised zone” along the current front line, Kyiv’s ceding of Russia-occupied areas and a delay of Ukraine’s NATO membership.
Ukraine’s sea drone weapons
At the end of last year, Ukraine scored a small victory that may herald huge losses in Russian navy bases and civilian seaports.
On December 31, Ukrainian sea drones, or un-piloted vessels armed with small missiles, attacked Russian helicopters in the bay of Sevastopol, the main naval base in annexed Crimea.
Ukraine claimed to have shot down two helicopters, killing all 16 crew members.
Moscow acknowledged no losses but said its forces destroyed four Ukrainian unmanned aircraft and two sea drones.
The attack showed that sea drones could wreak havoc on Russian port and naval infrastructure along the Black Sea, Bremen University’s Mitrokhin said.
Furthermore, Kyiv could use sea drones for attacks on the Russian navy in the Baltic, Barents and White Seas and in the Pacific.
“There is so much infrastructure there that it will be hard to cover it even with boom barriers, let alone protect them from all sides like in Sevastopol or [the Crimean port of] Feodosiya,” he said.
Meanwhile, the ongoing war of attrition tests Ukraine and Russia’s economies.
The Russian economy has “partially adapted to the pressure from [Western] sanctions, but it currently enters the inflation shock of overheating and slower growth” because of the Central Bank’s high percentage rates, Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kusch said.
The Ukrainian economy is “in shock” because of severely damaged energy infrastructure and a lack of labour force, he said.
But hydrocarbon exports help Russia’s economy recover from the shock, while Ukraine is kept afloat by Western financial aid.
“It creates a certain parity effect amid resistance to war,” Kushch told Al Jazeera.
US President-elect Donald Trump said NATO member states should increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP and criticised Europe’s contributions.
Several politicians in Germany have pushed back against US President-elect Donald Trump’s suggestion that NATO’s European members should spend 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, more than double the current target.
On Tuesday evening, Trump said that NATO nations were spending too little on defence and complained that “Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we’re in”.
“They can all afford it, but they should be at 5% not 2%,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
None of the alliance’s 32 members are currently spending 5% of GDP on defence, according to NATO data. Poland is the biggest spender by share of GDP at 4.12%, followed by Estonia at 3.43% and the US at 3.38%.
Ralf Stegner, a member of Germany’s Social Democrat Party (SPD) party, called Trump’s comments “delusional and absolutely insane” in a post on Facebook.
“We don’t need more weapons in the world, but fewer,” Stegner told Politico.
Marcus Faber, chairman of the defence committee in Germany’s parliament, agreed that 5% was too high. Faber said that NATO countries would have to agree on a new goal beyond 2%, but stated that the target should be 3% and decided by consensus.
Free Democratic Party (FDP) politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmerman said: “We are not at a bazaar here.”
“Trump, who sees himself as a dealmaker, naturally also hopes that the increased financial commitment of the European partners will benefit US industry in particular. But please don’t make up a number out of thin air,” Strack-Zimmerman said.
Trump’s latest call for NATO members to increase their defence spending is nothing new. During his first presidency, he repeatedly threatened to pull out of the military alliance if European allies failed to boost their spending.
The EU’s NATO members have increased their defence spending in recent years, largely as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
NATO estimated that 23 (including 16 from the EU) of its 32 members would meet its goal of spending 2% of GDP in 2024, up from just six countries in 2021. Italy, Belgium, and Spain are among those who are yet to reach the 2% threshold.
Germany will hit the 2% target for the first time this year, after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised a complete overhaul of the country’s military in 2022, breaking years of taboo against the country investing heavily in its military.
Despite this, officials and reports have repeatedly suggested that Germany’s military is unfit for purpose. An annual report released by parliament in March 2024 found that the Bundeswehr was “aged and shrinking” and severely lacked equipment and personnel.
The general consensus in Germany’s political establishment is that the nation should either maintain or increase its military spending — with several parties promoting a spending boost as part of their campaigns for the upcoming election set for 23 February.
ADVERTISEMENTGreen party chancellor candidate Robert Habeck told Spiegel magazine that Germany should aim for 3.5% in upcoming years.
“Geopolitically, it is foreseeable that we – Germany and Europe – will have to take more responsibility for our security, anything else would be naïve in view of the positioning of the USA,” Habeck said.
Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany’s opposition Christian Democrat Union (CDU) and the man tipped to succeed Scholz as chancellor, on Wednesday said the country would spend more on defence but he would not be drawn on a specific spending target.
“The 2, 3 or 5% (targets) are basically irrelevant, the decisive factor is that we do what is necessary to defend ourselves,” Merz told broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk.
ADVERTISEMENTNATO’s new chief, Mark Rutte, has warned that the 2% target is insufficient, and said in December that citizens of NATO member states should accept “sacrifices” including cuts to their pensions, health and security systems in order to boost military spending in Europe.
President-elect Trump reiterated that “all hell will break out” if the hostages still held in Gaza have not been freed by the time he enters office in two weeks on Jan. 20.
Trump was asked about the threats he first levied in early December at the Hamas terrorist organization that has continued to hold some 96 hostages, only 50 of whom are still assessed to be alive, including three Americans.
“All hell will break out,” Trump said, speaking alongside Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East and who has begun participating in cease-fire negotiations alongside the Biden administration and leaders from Egypt, Qatar, Israel and Hamas.
(Seven American hostages are being held in Gaza. From left, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Keith Siegel, Omer Neutra, Judi Weinstein Haggai, Gadi Haggai and Itay Chen, of whom three are still believed to be alive.)
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“If those hostages aren’t back – I don’t want to hurt your negotiation – if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” he added in reference to Witkoff.
Trump again refused to detail what this would mean for Hamas and the Trump transition team has not detailed for Fox News Digital what sort of action the president-elect might take.
In response to a reporter who pressed him on his meaning, Trump said, “Do I have to define it for you?”
“I don’t have to say any more, but that’s what it is,” he added.
President-elect Trump makes remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Jan. 7, 2025. (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
ISRAELI PM OFFICE DENIES REPORTS THAT HAMAS FORWARDED LIST OF HOSTAGES TO RELEASE IN EVENT OF DEAL
Witkoff said he would be heading to the Middle East either Tuesday night or Wednesday to continue cease-fire negotiations.
In the weeks leading up to the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays, there was a renewed sense of optimism that a cease-fire could finally be on the horizon after a series of talks over the prior 14 months had not only failed to bring the hostages home, but saw a mounting number of hostages killed in captivity. Once again, though, no deal was pushed through before the New Year.
After nearly 460 days since the hostages were first taken in Gaza in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Witkoff appeared to be holding onto hope that a deal could be secured in the near future.
Steve Witkoff, speaks during a campaign event for former President Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York, on Oct. 27, 2024. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“I think that we’ve had some really great progress. And I’m really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president,” Witkoff told reporters. “I actually believe that we’re working in tandem in a really good way. But it’s the president – his reputation, the things that he has said that are driving this negotiation and so, hopefully, it’ll all work out and we’ll save some lives.”
In addition to the roughly 50 people believed to be alive and in Hamas captivity, the terrorist group is believed to be holding at least 38 who were taken hostage and then killed while in captivity, as well as at least seven who are believed to have been killed on Oct. 7, 2023, and then taken into Gaza.
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