Views: 11

Catherine Norris Trent takes us to frontlines of Ukrainian-controlled towns in Russia’s Kursk region

FRANCE 24’s Senior Reporter Catherine Norris Trent takes us deep into Ukrainian-controlled towns in Russia’s Kursk region. Our veteran war reporter recounts “when the Ukrainians mounted a lightning offensive and breached the Russian border in a move which surprised many of Ukraine’s allies.” Embedded with the Ukrainian military, she offers us an intimate, unprecedented view of daily life in Kursk towns seized by Ukraine, including the spontaneous interactions between Ukrainian soldiers and the local Russian population weary of their Ukrainian occupiers. Catherine Norris Trent describes the “unstable situation on the ground” surrounded by “battle sounds”: shells, artillery, explosions and plumes of smoke never too far off. And there is “pretty intensive fighting” thundering in the distance. The Ukrainian military told her it is a very “dynamic, fast moving, ever-changing” battle and now Russia has begun to fire over “80 attack drones, missiles and guide bombs on its own territory inside the Kursk region.” Surprisingly many Russian locals were more than willing to interact with the media to share their story. Some expressed their sheer anger towards Ukraine, believing that the war only began this past August with Ukraine’s Kursk incursion. Speaking to local residents, Catherine Norris Trent described the challenging day-to-day situation for elders with “very little contact with the outside world”, wanting desperately to seek assistance, evacuate and connect with family members. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky envisions this military incursion into Kursk as a key element to his “victory plan” and endgame to “bring the war to Russia and coerce Putin by military means”. His hope is to stretch Russian forces thin, force an end to this war of attrition and strong arm concessions from Moscow. For Ukraine, Russia forced them into a ruthless war a decade ago, following the 2014 Euromaidan protests that led to the subsequent fall of the Russian-backed government of anti-EU President Viktor Yanukovych. Russian forces quickly seized the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Putin shortly thereafter. All the while, conflict was heating up in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, as Russia actively supported pro-Russian separatist forces who eventually took control of large swaths of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Fighting between the separatists and Ukrainian government forces continued unabated in the leadup to Russia’s unprecedented all-out invasion of the former Soviet country back in February 2022. And now Russia’s 31-month war on Ukraine has morphed into a brutal proxy war of attrition, with no end in sight. And so while Russia continues pounding Ukraine’s electricity grid and terrorises Kyiv with drone attacks, Zelensky is currently addressing the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York to rally financial and military support from the West and send a stark warning to Ukraine’s allies of Moscow’s imminent plot to launch potentially catastrophic attacks on Ukrainian nuclear plants. Shortly after Zelensky’s dramatic speech to world leaders at the UN, Putin made his most explicit threat yet to use nuclear weapons, saying Russia would consider such a response to a “massive” air attack on its soil.

FRANCE24