Horror in the killing fields of Kursk: Ukraine must replace its machine guns that ‘can’t take it anymore’ after mowing down wave after wave of Putin’s cannon fodder troops

Fighting in Russia’s Kursk region has intensified, with Ukrainian forces taking out entire columns of tanks and leaving the battlefield littered with the bodies of Russian and North Korean soldiers, horrifying footage reportedly shows.

Desperate to reclaim the region, part of which was first captured by Kiev’s forces in August and has since been defended by Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has sent wave after wave of troops to die as “cannon fodder.”

So exhausted by the speed with which they killed their enemies, Ukrainian machine guns are being replaced regularly, according to reports.

One soldier compared the attack to the bloody sieges of eastern Ukrainian cities like Bakhmut, saying that “after two hours (arms operators) couldn’t handle it anymore.”

“Here the Russians must take this territory at all costs, and are putting all their strength into it, while we are giving everything we have to hold it,” Sergeant Oleksandr, 46, a leader of the Ukrainian infantry platoon, told the New York Newspaper New York. Times.

“We are holding on, destroying, destroying, destroying – so much that it is even hard to comprehend.”

Aiming to retake the city of Malaya Loknya, a key Ukrainian stronghold in the region, Putin’s forces reportedly launched a series of massive combined attacks involving some 50 armored vehicles and hundreds of soldiers.

Ukrainian forces reportedly decimated the columns by disabling the lead vehicles with landmines and drone strikes, forcing those behind them to stop.

While they were in the line of fire, the Russian soldiers in the vehicles abandoned them and tried to take cover in nearby trenches, easily eliminating them by Ukrainian gunfire and grenades dropped by drones.

Images shared by Euromaidan Press shows what appears to be Russian soldiers cowering in ditches and under trees as they are hunted by Ukrainian drones.

Thanks to the enormous manpower hired by Moscow and the sheer scale of the attacks, Putin’s forces have been able to gain ground in the region in recent days.

At extremely high costs, which would have involved losing almost an entire mechanized company in one day, they reportedly managed to take back control of the villages of Leonidovo and the eastern part of Novoivanovka.

Their “meat attacks” have been bolstered in recent months by the deployment of an estimated 12,000 North Korean soldiers, which Ukrainian soldiers say has made the fighting even bloodier.

“They are putting enormous pressure on our fronts and are constantly finding weak points to break through,” said a platoon leader.

It comes after harrowing images showed the bodies of more than a dozen North Korean troops on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian OSINT group said the video “confirms that the Russian command continues to use Koreans en masse as cannon fodder for infantry attacks on Ukrainian army positions.”

The North Koreans were sent “ahead of Russian units” to storm frontline positions in Russia’s Kursk region, which was contested amid a blistering Ukrainian offensive, it added.

After a battle in Kursk this week, Ukrainian special forces searched the bodies of more than a dozen slain North Korean enemy soldiers.

They found one still alive, but as they got closer he detonated a grenade, blowing himself up, according to a description of the fighting posted on social media by Ukrainian Special Operations Forces on Monday.

The armed forces said their soldiers escaped the explosion unscathed.

The report could not be verified, but mounting evidence from the battlefield, intelligence reports and defector testimonies shows that some North Korean soldiers are resorting to extreme measures while supporting Russia’s three-year war with Ukraine.

“Self-detonations and suicides: that is the reality in North Korea,” said Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022 and asked to be identified only by his last name for fear of reprisals against his family moved north.

“These soldiers who left their homes to fight there have been brainwashed and are really willing to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un,” he added, referring to the reclusive North Korean leader.

Moscow and Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the North’s troop deployment as ‘fake news’.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin did not deny in October that North Korean soldiers were currently in Russia and a North Korean official said such a deployment would be legal.

Previous reports say the bodies’ faces were deliberately mutilated – including by burning – to prevent them from being identified as North Koreans.

Ukraine and South Korea said late last year that North Korea had sent at least 10,000 troops to support Putin’s war efforts as Ukraine began making territorial gains within Kursk.

As many as 300 North Korean soldiers are believed to have been killed and another 2,700 injured in fighting so far, South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun told reporters on Monday.

He added that Pyongyang’s forces were told to commit suicide before allowing themselves to be captured alive.

Ukraine this week released videos of two captured North Korean soldiers.

One of the soldiers expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine and the other to return to North Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.