By Isabel Coles and Ievgeniia Sivorka | Photographs by Serhii Korovayny for WSJ
SUMY, Ukraine -- As the pocket of territory held by Ukrainian troops in Russia shrank around him, Ukrainian Sr. Sgt. Zenon Dashak began plotting a way out.
For weeks, few supply vehicles could get through to the troops in Kursk province as Russian advances had brought the roads into the range of explosive-drone teams -- leaving Ukrainian stocks so low that some soldiers melted snow for drinking water.
Dashak, a drone operator, began studying maps. With roads under fire, he and his men would face a perilous hike through forests and swamps.
It was a harsh end to a seven-month operation that shocked Moscow and the West with the first invasion of Russian territory since World War II. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would later declare that the operation had achieved its aims by catching Russia off guard, drawing in Russian forces that could have been deployed in Ukraine and seizing hundreds of prisoners.
Critics have questioned whether it was worth the troops and equipment expended, but that debate was of little interest to the Ukrainian soldiers on the ground in Kursk who now had a new aim of their own: getting out alive.
Assaults by Russian and North Korean troops had whittled away at the land held by Ukrainian troops for several months. By the end of February, Russia had choked off supply routes from Ukrainian territory, targeting any movement along the main road with explosive drones guided by fiber-optic cable, which prevented Ukraine from jamming them electronically. It became almost impossible to rotate troops in and out. Vehicles attempting to deliver ammunition and provisions were picked off.
"We couldn't hold on any longer," said a senior sergeant in a mortar unit known by the call sign Mesnik.
Other units had already begun to withdraw when Mesnik and his mortar crew embarked on the arduous walk back to Ukraine. Their U.S.-supplied M120 mortar launcher was too heavy to carry so they destroyed it and planted mines before leaving. Russian soldiers were so close they could hear them over the radio, he said.
The situation was already critical when Dashak's unit heard that Russian forces had broken through Ukrainian lines by sneaking through a gas pipe on March 8. Ukraine's army said it had thwarted the attempt, but Dashak and other soldiers said it triggered panic. Some field commanders told their men to withdraw before receiving orders from senior officers.
"If I hadn't done it, the boys would likely have become prisoners of war -- or worse," said platoon commander Sgt. Serhiy Savchuk, who was later reprimanded.
Before leaving, Dashak and the two other members of his unit destroyed everything they couldn't take with them, including a generator, drones and antennas. They were about to leave when a drone strike nearby caused a gas canister to explode, throwing Dashak off his feet and searing the skin on his left side. It was time to go.
They set out from their position in the village of Kazachya Loknya, sticking to the cover of treelines. When they encountered other groups of retreating Ukrainian soldiers, they were careful to pick a different route to avoid drawing attention. As drone operators themselves, they knew how to spot targets and used those skills to avoid being seen.
A Ukrainian soldier they met warned them a group of Russian soldiers was no more than 500 yards away. To avoid them, they would have to break cover and walk across open fields in full view of Russian reconnaissance drones. As they trudged on, a strike hit the place they had stopped to rest moments earlier. "We had to keep moving to survive," Dashak said.
Light was ebbing and there was still a long way to go. If moving in the daytime was difficult, night was worse. Darkness made it impossible to spot first-person-view drones, or FPVs, overhead -- or mines underfoot. And drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras would still be able to see them.
An elderly Russian woman pointed the way to a field hospital in Sudzha, the main town held by Ukraine, where they spent the night in a basement. Other soldiers covered themselves in branches or bedded down in abandoned homes.
Early the next day, they set off again. The main road to the border was strewn with the smoldering corpses of Ukrainian soldiers and damaged equipment with dead servicemen inside, Dashak said. He took food and ammunition from abandoned Ukrainian vehicles and picked up a driver who was so badly concussed he couldn't say what brigade he belonged to. Other soldiers said they had discarded their body armor along the way to lighten their load. Exhaustion made them increasingly careless, but a mixture of fear and the will to survive pushed them on. "It gives you superhuman strength," said Dashak, a 30-year-old who before the war was a professional musician playing viola, violin and piano.
It was about 4 p.m. when they finally reached the border post and crossed into Ukrainian territory. Still, they weren't safe. Russian drones were striking deep inside Ukraine's Sumy region.
A combat medic who withdrew from Kursk two weeks ago said some men had been hospitalized with wounds to their feet after walking for more than 18 miles. Another medic stationed near the border said many had stepped on petal mines. "The sky is full of FPV drones so you don't really pay attention to what's under your feet," said the medic. "Most lose their legs."
By invading Kursk, Ukraine had prevented Russia from entering other regions and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, said Dashak, whose burns have now nearly healed. But the delayed withdrawal had unnecessarily cost lives and equipment. "It would have been quite a successful operation if it had ended at least a month ago," he said.
Ukraine had hoped to keep a toehold in Russia to use the territory as a bargaining chip in any negotiation.
Ukraine's top military commander has said he gave orders for troops to withdraw to more advantageous positions to preserve lives. Ukrainian soldiers are clinging to a hilly sliver of land on the Russian side of the border.
Despite the difficult withdrawal, Russia didn't encircle large groups of Ukrainian soldiers, Dashak said.
President Trump's claim to have asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to spare the lives of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers surrounded by Russia left Mesnik speechless. Still, he said it would have been better to save the resources expended in Kursk to recapture Ukrainian territory.
"So many people died there," said Mesnik. "To be fair, we did kill a lot of Russians too."
Analysts who study videos and satellite images from the battlefield put the ratio of equipment losses at about 1:1. That is unfavorable for Ukraine, as Russia is more readily able to replace equipment.
Five months after being conscripted into the Ukrainian army, Pavlo Ivanov returned home from Kursk in a coffin wrapped in blue velvet. Ivanov, 33 years old, joins around 30 others from Kamianske who were killed in the Kursk operation, a city official said.
On Tuesday, residents of Kamianske in eastern Ukraine came out to pay their respects, kneeling in the road on a frigid morning and holding the Ukrainian flag as the funeral cortege passed by. Municipal workers paused -- shovel in hand -- to watch as the convoy drove by army recruitment billboards, urging: "Don't hesitate, join us!"
Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 21, 2025 23:00 ET (03:00 GMT)
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