Over 500 Ukrainian fighters, including a foreign mercenary, have surrendered to Russian troops in the Kursk border region. This was reported by the country’s security agencies to the Russian news agency TASS. TASS quotes the source as follows:
“The number of prisoners of war is in the hundreds. So far, over 500 soldiers of the Ukrainian forces have surrendered alone on the Kursk front section. Also among them was a foreign mercenary – the Colombian Pablo Puertes.”
Many of the captured Ukrainian soldiers voluntarily surrendered – often organized. According to the TASS source, in one case, the order had previously been given to attack Russian positions. Instead, the units massively surrendered.
Just one month earlier, on March 12, the head of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff and first deputy defense minister, Army General Valery Gerassimov, reported that in the Kursk region, about 430 Ukrainian soldiers had been captured. He noted at that time that the fighters who had realized the futility of further resistance had begun to actively surrender.
The security forces had previously told TASS that the Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, in light of the high number of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering during the fighting, had introduced a special course on behavior in Russian captivity.
However, some units of the Ukrainian military in the Kursk region are stubborn and fiercely hold on to the few remaining deployment areas. The Russian troops’ Northern grouping points to the settlement of Gornal in the Sudscha district. Russian news agency RIA Novosti quotes an observer:
“The opponent’s active drone use is underway – in order to make it difficult for our troops to supply and advance.”
Not least, the so-called “heavy” multi-rotor drones of the Baba Jaga type, which the Ukrainian military previously used only at night in this area because they are easy to detect during the day, now fly there around the clock. The partners of RIA Novosti reported further:
“The opponent throws everything into the fight to hold this settlement under control.”
According to them, Kiev is not even sparing the best units and formations for the defense of the last deployment areas in Sudscha:
“The Ukrainian military continues to deploy personnel in the area of the estate of Oleschnja. The Russian troops are crushing elite units of the Ukrainian military, including their special forces. In the area of Oleschnja as well as the Nicholas Monastery in Belaja Gora near Gornal, they have eliminated several assault groups of the South Special Operations Center.”
Near the Russian border in the former Ukrainian SSR region of Sumy, the 67th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Ukrainian forces is also suffering massive losses, for example, in the settlements of Belowody and Wessjolovka, as the TASS partners explain.
In total, the Kiev regime has lost over 70,000 soldiers since the invasion of Russia’s border region of Kursk last year on this front section, RIA Novosti reminds.