Kyiv, Ukraine – As Ukrainian forces fight in the western Russian region of Kursk, they are encountering a new enemy – elite North Korean servicemen.

On Sunday, Ukrainian infantry and armoured vehicles resumed an offensive in three directions in Kursk, trying to fence their toehold in the district centre of Sudzha that they had seized in August.

On Tuesday, they occupied at least 3 villages northeast in Southzha and inflicted losses on the North Korean fighting in the Russian command separated.

“We have clarified their ranks: they have losses, Kim has not only sent ordinary soldiers,” a Ukrainian soldier told Al Jazeera, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

He revealed his name, the main points and his precise position of the battles according to war times.

South Korean officials said Kim had deployed more than 10,000 elite infantrymen to Kursk. Hundreds of other people have already been killed there.

More than 450km (280 miles) south of Kursk, another Ukrainian serviceman keeps repelling waves of Russian infantrymen near the key southeastern city of Pokrovsk.

“It turns out that they sent a new brigade every day,” the soldier told Al Jazeera.

Russians keep advancing despite a reported lack of tanks and armoured vehicles.

“They continue to press. The only challenge they have is their team, they release it as they did 3 or 4 months ago,” he said.

But the biggest challenge that his unity, like all the armed forces of Ukraine, face a disastrous work shortage.

Last week, Ukrainian troops withdrew from the eastern city of Kurakhove, which Russian troops claimed on Monday.

kyiv’s forces have also lost a key coal mine near Pokrovsk and would possibly be about to waste the largest lithium tank in Ukraine in Shevchenkove.

“The Kurakhove defence installations have been taken over just because we didn’t have anybody there,” the serviceman said. “The most motivated soldiers have been killed, the new ones lack training and motivation.”

He also cited poor decisions made by commanding officers, alleging they want to appease their superiors and do not value the lives of servicemen.

“The stupidity of the commanders has injured me so many times,” he said.

Russian forces who seized Kurakhove are looting deserted apartments, an alleged location.

“They are heading to apartments that have not broken down the bombing, they are stealing everything they can remove,” said Olena Basenko, a former Kurakhove sales employee who is for her old aunt who refused to leave the city, told Al Jazeera

“Some” liberators “who are,” said Moscow’s promise to “free” Ukraine from the “neo -Nazi Board” of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russian statements that have been discredited throughout the war.

Ukraine’s dearth of hard work has led some analysts to doubt Kyiv’s push to take over the Kursk offensive.

“Zelenskyy’s strategy is composed of brigades with devices at the rear to lose it solemnly in Kursk’s country to win 1. 5 km [1 mile] of agricultural lands,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher of the German University of Bremen, in Al Jazeera.

The units that are advancing in Kursk could instead have been used to defend Kurakhove, he said.

However, others see Kursk’s offensive as a possibility to download a negotiation program.

Ukraine can visit a Russian nuclear power plant in the city of Kurchatov, which is about 70 km (45 miles) northeast of Southzha and can see to capture the regional capital of Kursk 30 km (20 miles) farther away.

On the occasion of success, Kurchatov’s acquisition can a vital strategic gain, according to the former attached leader of the general personnel of the Ukrainian armed forces.

“We didn’t want to make things worse, but we need to,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

kyiv can also invade Bryansk’s neighboring region, a blow to the internal reputation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said.

“It will be painful in Putin, and if there is an offensive somewhere in Bryansk or in regions, it will make him think,” said Romanenko.

Some Russians ridicule Putin’s policies that led to the first foreign invasion of western Russia since World War II.

“If the grandfather of the bunker is so wise, why do we have Ukrainians in Russian land? Something is wrong,” Roman, a 48 -year -old muscovite that served in a tank unit in the 1990s, to the jazeera, mocking the Russian president.

Bryansk borders Ukraine and has been attacked through two Ukrainian army sets made up of pro-Ukrainian Russian fighters.

Romanenko said that Putin’s resolution on Russia’s offensive in southeast Ukraine means a “Fiasco” of Trump’s “peace plan”.

“This ended in Fiasco because Putin rejected the proposed edition through the Trump team,” he said.

Trump presented few main points in the plan, but, according to his team, he can come with the creation of a “demilitarized area” along the existing front line, the transfer of the spaces occupied through kyiv of the occupied spaces Through Russia and one stay at the NATO Ukraine Club.

At the end of last year, Ukraine scored a small victory that may herald huge losses in Russian navy bases and civilian seaports.

On December 31, the Ukrainian sea drones or unleashed ships armed with small missiles, attacked Russian helicopters in the Bay of Sébastopol, the naval base of the Crimea Annexed.

Ukraine said he had shot two helicopters, killing team members.

Moscow acknowledged any loss even said its forces had destroyed 4 Ukrainian aircraft and two marine drones.

The attack showed that sea drones could wreak havoc on Russian port and naval infrastructure along the Black Sea, Bremen University’s Mitrokhin said.

Furthermore, Kyiv could use sea drones for attacks on the Russian navy in the Baltic, Barents and White Seas and in the Pacific.

“There is so much infrastructure there that it will be hard to cover it even with boom barriers, let alone protect them from all sides like in Sevastopol or [the Crimean port of] Feodosiya,” he said.

Meanwhile, the wear war tries the economies of Ukraine and Russia.

The Russian economy “has partially adjusted to the tension of the [Western] sanctions, however, it is entering the surprise of overheating inflation and the slowest growth” due to the main percentage rates of the Central Bank, said Aleksey Kusch , Kiev headquarters.

The Ukrainian economy is “in a state of shock” due to an infrastructure to be able to be serious and a lack of work, he said.

But hydrocarbon exports are helping Russia’s economy from shock, while Ukraine is staying afloat through Western monetary aid.

“It creates a certain parity effect amid resistance to war,” Kushch told Al Jazeera.