The attack on Russia's Kursk region prompted the Ukrainian military to withdraw troops and weapons from its "already-creaking front lines to pull it off," the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported.
Ukraine is redeploying troops from the eastern front to Russia’s Kursk region, "leaving units even more stretched," in a "gamble that risks making a bad situation [for Kiev] worse," the newspaper argued.
Ukrainian military commanders don’t have enough people to do their job properly, with exhausted soldiers "spending longer in the trenches because there are no fresh troops to replace them," the WSJ cited one commander as saying.
The situation for Ukrainian troops has become "more punishing through the summer—with no sign that Russian forces are easing up" since the Kursk aggression began on August 6, according to the WSJ.
"Sending [Ukrainian] troops to Kursk [region] means taking them away from the Donetsk region. Troops in the east said they weren’t yet convinced that sending Ukrainian troops into Russia would pay off," the newspaper concluded.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost about 2,640 soldiers and 37 tanks since the start of what President Vladimir Putin described as a large-scale provocation by the Kiev regime in Kursk.