'However many troops they lose, they just keep coming'

Ukraine is under pressure, from Donetsk to Kharkiv - while Putin wants to reclaim Russia's Kursk region before Trump takes office. Askold Krushelnycky talks to officers in the field

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As Russian forces intensify attacks against hard-pressed Ukrainian soldiers along much of the 600-mile front line, a senior Ukrainian military source has told The Independent that Moscow will keep up the assaults until the moment of Donald Trump’s inauguration – despite the huge troop losses Vladimir Putin’s forces are suffering.

The colonel, who has requested not to be named, says both Ukraine and Russia have to take seriously Trump’s campaign promises to quickly end the war, although the president in waiting has not explained how he plans to bring about a ceasefire.

“What is clear,” says the colonel, “is that the Russians want to take as much Ukrainian territory as possible and clear Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk [Russian border] region we occupied in August before any negotiations begin.”

Ukraine’s General Staff has said the relentless Russian attacks are aimed at fulfilling Putin’s oft-repeated ambition to control all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, to create a buffer zone along Russia’s border, to broaden the areas Russia already occupies in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and to open up a new front threatening the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine.

“So they will continue – probably try to intensify – their attacks, regardless of the huge losses they are suffering with their continuous assaults,” the colonel says. “The weather is getting colder now, with temperatures turning from plus to below zero. That produces early morning fog in many places, which they have successfully exploited to make partial inroads with surprise attacks on Ukrainian strongholds such as Kurakhove and Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region.

“Fog and rain [have] also impeded our aerial surveillance so that we sometimes miss the signs of impending attacks.”