Deputy Commander of 95th Brigade on capturing Malaya Loknya in Kursk Oblast, switching to defence, and POWs with Ukrainian driving licences

It's been three months since the Kursk operation started and Ukraine opened the Kursk front - the first front on Russian territory in this war. Summing up the results of the operation, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has said that the Russian forces have lost more than 20,000 soldiers killed, wounded and captured on this front. In addition, more than 1,000 pieces of Russian military equipment, including 50 tanks, have been destroyed.

However, Ukrainian soldiers have already had to withdraw from some of the captured settlements. The area of Russian territory controlled by the Ukrainian defence forces has roughly halved, from more than 1,200 sq km in late August, as reported by Syrskyi to President Zelenskyy, to about 600 sq km in November, as recorded by observers from the military analysis project DeepState.

One of the strongest brigades currently operating in Kursk Oblast is the 95th Separate Air Assault Brigade. Ukrainska Pravda sources in the command of Ukraine's Air Assault Forces say this brigade continues to hold its positions - particularly its airmobile battalion, which operates at the easternmost point of the area captured by Ukraine.

In a short telephone interview, Ukrainska Pravda asked Andrii Horets, the first deputy commander of the 95th Brigade's airmobile battalion, about going from active assaults to defence in Kursk Oblast, the encirclement and driving the Russians out of the village of Malaya Loknya, and how they prepared for the operation. Andrii is 26 and originally from Sumy Oblast. He studied at the Military Academy in Odesa.

He has been serving in the Air Assault Forces since 2019, first in the 13th Separate Air Assault Battalion named after the Hero of Ukraine Colonel Seniuk, then in the 95th Brigade. His love for one of the strongest and at the same time least flexible branches of the Ukrainian forces is evidenced by a tiny tattoo on his left palm - "For the AAF" (Air Assault Forces). Since the full-scale war started, Horets has fought in Kharkiv Oblast, in the forests of Kreminna in Luhansk Oblast, on the Mariupol front, near Terny and Toretsk in Donetsk Oblast, and now on the Kursk front.

The average age of the fighters in his battalion is 40.

Andrii, can I ask you to think back to late July and early August, when the air assault brigades were informed they would be taking part in the Kursk operation. How did your battalion and brigade approach this task? We were told about the operation about a week before it started, when units started being redeployed from the Toretsk front.

What was the reaction like? I would say it was normal and balanced, although everyone was scared - and that's okay. We didn't hide anything from anyone; everyone understood where they were going.

It is better to fight on the enemy's territory, after all. To destroy their infrastructure so that they don't destroy ours. Here's a question for you as someone from Sumy Oblast: did you realise that the Russians would bombard Sumy Oblast more intensively once the Kursk operation started?

They were bombarding it anyway with rockets, Shahed attack drones and aerial bombs. There were practically no strikes on the city of Sumy before the Kursk operation. There were, but not so often.

Now, of course, they are more frequent, especially in the villages on the outskirts of Sumy. Paratroopers from the 80th Brigade told us they had several weeks of training before the Kursk operation, including training in mock terrain made to resemble villages in Kursk Oblast. Did you have anything like that?

Yes, of course. After redeployment from the Toretsk front, we had three days to prepare, staff units, and practise elements of the offensive - both in combat vehicles and on foot. I taught my battalion how to move in a convoy in combat vehicles, dismount, consolidate, and fire from equipment.

Before that, of course, we'd focused on how artillery works. Once we'd done that, we moved on to defence - everything from digging a simple trench to laying mines and doing engineering work. In preparation for this operation, it was also crucial to figure out how to navigate the terrain, as it hadn't been studied, so the enemy might appear out of any random bushes.

You have to be constantly ready to open fire on the enemy in any direction. Physically, though, the terrain here is the same as in the east [of Ukraine - ed.]: villages, steppe, wooded areas, forests, and sometimes dense forests. So there's no significant difference between combat operations here and there.

What was your battalion's initial task?

What point did you have to reach, and how much time did you have to do that? We didn't break through the border - that was done by the 80th and 82nd Brigades. We arrived five days after the start of the operation, after 10 August, and began to conduct assaults and mop-up operations in and around Malaya Loknya and Pogrebki [northeast of Sudzha - ed.].

The 80th and 82nd Brigades were advancing to the right or left at the time. The Russians withdrew quite calmly from the border settlements and surrendered, and sometimes, as in Sudzha, they barricaded themselves in buildings and held the defence there. How did they behave in villages located further away from the border, deeper into Russia?

They resisted. To capture Malaya Loknya, for example, we encircled it from all sides and mopped it up gradually, on foot and in combat vehicles. There were a lot of enemy personnel there - over 100.

They were in every basement and in every house. They put up a fight in three-storey apartment buildings and detached houses. It's quite a big village.

The whole operation lasted about two weeks. Were there any civilians in Malaya Loknya? Yes, not many, but there were some - mostly elderly people.

They didn't ask us to take them anywhere, they stayed in their homes. Any we thought were suspicious we handed over to the military commandant's office in Sudzha. Most of the locals fled at the beginning of the operation.

Those who didn't leave were very surprised when they saw vehicles with Ukrainian flags - they thought it was impossible. I only talked to one local, and he said he didn't know there was a war on. And what about fortifications deep inside Russia - were there any?

Had the Russian army been preparing to fight on its territory? Beyond Malaya Loknya, for example, there was a T-shaped area of forest, so the enemy had dug plenty of trenches there. They had positions and pillboxes there.

But that didn't help them - some of them were killed, some escaped, and some surrendered. Were they prepared to fight? I don't know.

The positions had definitely been equipped in advance, and they hadn't been made recently.

What happened after you captured Malaya Loknya and mopped up? Then we went to join up with our first battalion, which had occupied the next village, Pogrebki. On the way to Pogrebki, we mopped up the settlements where there were still some remnants of Russian forces.

I remember that our pickup truck might be driving along and it would come under fire from the bushes. They were hiding in wooded areas, houses and basements. The offensive was so intense that there wasn't time to look in every garden.

We had to move forward as quickly as possible. And when the line of contact started to more or less take shape and became somewhat stable, we started on targeted mop-up operations. You mentioned that you used both infantry and combat vehicles for the assaults.

What kind of vehicles were they? They were mainly German-supplied Marder infantry fighting vehicles, tanks, and armoured vehicles like Kozaks and Ivecos. During the first and, I think, the second week of the operation, Starlinks weren't operating in Russian territory.

How did you solve the communication issue? How did you keep in touch with people who were going on assaults? Mostly by radio.

It worked as normal, just like on our territory. For the internet we used a satellite connection at first. It's a bit like a Starlink: you install a special modem and an antenna, and that's it, you're connected.

Over time, we got the Starlinks working. To be precise, the government-issued ones mostly worked, but the ones from volunteers worked a lot less often. Perhaps they have different software.

Was there any event in the timeline of this operation when you realised that the advance was successful? It was obvious immediately - there was a significant advance by our troops, the enemy was constantly suffering losses, and a lot of prisoners of war were taken. Our battalion alone took 37 prisoners, and the brigade took more than 100.

By the way, not only did the prisoners have stamps in their passports showing that they'd previously crossed the Ukrainian border, but some of them even had Ukrainian driving licences. There were a lot of convicts who either had to fight or stay in prison. There were paratroopers, marines... well, I say marines - they were conscripted Russians who were caught on the street, given a uniform and a rifle, and that's it, they're marines.

Those who wanted to live surrendered; those who wanted to fight for Russia to the end were killed.

Did you have a plan B in case you failed to break through to Malaya Loknya? No, we had to break through to Malaya Loknya (smiles). When did the Ukrainian army's rapid advance in Kursk Oblast stop?

Around the end of September. By then, the enemy had established its defences, dug in and began to constantly counterattack, launching assaults with infantry fighting vehicles, armoured personnel carriers and tanks. It was challenging, because two or three assaults a day means fatigue, exhaustion and lack of sleep.

To avoid suffering losses from an enemy with far superior resources, we went on the defensive. That is, we began to set up a fire system, lay mines and put up engineering barriers, and constantly hold the area we occupied. To what extent has the area of Kursk Oblast that the Ukrainian defence forces controlled at the beginning of the operation changed to date?

It hasn't changed in our area of responsibility; we are not losing positions. Only a couple that you might call inconvenient: mud that floods the trenches, trenches that are targeted by FPV drones and artillery. We have no way to dig trenches there.

How stable is the front line in Kursk Oblast now? I would say that the enemy carries out attacks every day. Usually, vehicles bringing infantrymen arrive in the evening, then the infantrymen set up some positions and conduct assault operations in the morning.

The front line in our area of responsibility is stable. No matter what anyone says, the enemy is suffering huge losses here, and our losses are small. The more assaults there are, the bigger the losses.

Today [10 November - ed.], for example, 15 Russian soldiers were killed. That's by explosives dropped from drones, FPV drones, artillery, and even small arms fire, if they [the Russians] reach the trenches. Our goal is always the same - to destroy as many enemy soldiers as possible.

So that they don't want to come to our land, like they keep on doing.

One of the questions that, in my opinion, is still unanswered is why the Russians, who are waging a full-scale war against Ukraine, were so weak in defending their border from Ukraine. Why were there former convicts and the Russian Guard there [and not regular troops]? There were conscripts who were supposed to be doing their regular military service too.

This happened because they sent their main forces to the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia fronts. And here they left the remnants, who were put on the defensive. Isn't it strange to leave weak troops on your territory and send the strong ones to attack someone else's?

They didn't think we could carry out an operation like this. They didn't think we could enter their territory. Olha Kyrylenko, Ukrainska Pravda

Translation: Myroslava Zavadska

Editing: Teresa Pearce