The battle is bloodier that ever in Kursk province, Vitaliy Ovcharenko tells me. His unit, which he cannot name for security reasons, was part of the second Ukrainian wave into Russia. He has been fighting there since August 20.
‘The Russians are attacking like psychos,’ he tells me over the encrypted messaging app Signal.
‘Around three to five days ago – I can’t say exactly for sure because I never sleep regularly here – they launched one of their biggest attacks yet.
‘But they used the same tactics and the same route. A column of Russians just came straight toward us; we pounded them and destroyed around 40 armoured vehicles in one day.
‘The next day they repeated the attack with 12 armoured vehicles, and we destroyed those, too.’
It seems extraordinary, but I have seen and heard the same things at every front line I have visited across south and eastern Ukraine: The Russians are happy sending their soldiers to the ‘meat grinder’ to be slaughtered. They have…
