A Lithuanian volunteer, Osvaldas, was injured on March 10 while fighting on the Ukrainian side in Kursk. He tells LRT that his injuries are not life-threatening and shares what the moods are among Ukrainians occupying a piece of Russian land that has lately seen the most intense fighting.
According to the Lithuanian soldier, his injuries are not life-threatening. They were sustained during tasks at the front from a drone attack. A fellow soldier was killed instantly during the same airstrike.
Osvaldas was serving in Kursk, a region in Russia that Ukrainian forces occupied last August but are now being gradually pushed out by the Russian forces.
“I’ll say as much as I can, it was the Kursk operation,” Osvaldas told LRT RADIO. “If you follow the news, you have probably noticed that there are a lot of enemy drones with fibre optic cables. The main injuries are now coming from enemy drones. I was hit by a few splinters in my leg, in my arm, but there is no danger to my life.”
As the wounded soldier notes, the biggest threat to Ukraine’s troops currently comes from Russian drones.
“They cross logistical routes, destroy anti-drone assets. They’re the biggest headache because there is no way to fight them,” he says. “We are just getting into the swing of using this type of drones [drones with fibre optic cables].”
‘We just do our job’
On the front, Osvaldas says there is a balance between Ukrainian and Russian forces at the moment.
“The occupying forces are not penetrating, they are subdued, because the troops are exhausted, but now they have focused all their effort, apparently before the negotiations, on the Kursk region – that is where they are the most active, with a large number of professional drone operators and combat troops,” he says.
“However, this is not a defensive operation, because the Ukrainians are not defending their land there – it is a targeted operation to take over part of Russian land and thus build up a serious force,” Osvaldas explains. “If they take back a piece of the Kursk region, it does not mean that they will enter Ukraine. [...] The Russians are moving slowly. That movement is insignificant.”
According to him, everything is going according to the plan of the Ukrainian General Staff. Moreover, the Lithuanian stresses that ordinary soldiers have not yet felt the effects of the US having stopped military support and intelligence sharing with Kyiv.
“If we have time, we watch the news, but it doesn’t really affect our fighting or what we do. We just do our job. The fighting spirit is unchanged and everybody is willing to fight,” he says. “There is no need for a ceasefire, it is better to resolve things here and now.”
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