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By Marc Santora and Liubov Sholudko
Photographs by Finbarr o’Reilly
Five months after Ukrainian forces swept across the border in the first ground invasion of Russia since World War II, the two armies are engaged in some of the most furious clashes of the war there, fighting over land and leverage in the conflict.
The intensity of the battles remembers some of the worst seating of eastern Ukraine in the beyond 3 years, adding villages such as Bakhmut and Avdiivka, names that now evoke memories of mass blood bath for two sides infantry men.
The fighting, in the Kursk region of Russia, has taken on a layer of significance for the territory’s potential to play a role in any cease-fire negotiations. Facing the prospect of an unpredictable new U.S. president — who has vowed to end the war swiftly, without clarifying the terms — Ukraine hopes to use Russian territory as a bargaining chip.
Russia, relying on North Korean reinforcements, hopes to knock that territory out of Ukraine’s grasp.
“Here, the Russians will have to take this territory to all prices and pouring all their strength, while we give everything we have to sustain it,” the sergeant. said. Oleksandr, 46, leader of a Ukrainian infantry squad. We support, we destroy, we destroy, we destroy so much that it is difficult to understand. “
He and other soldiers, asking to be identified by only a first name or call sign in accordance with military protocol, said that attacking North Korean infantry had made the battles far more ferocious than before.
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