Ukrainian troops celebrate a grim Christmas in Kursk

THE NEWSPAPER round in Velyka Pysarivka can be sketchy. Barely 3km from the Russian border, the village is stalked by death. Oleskiy and Natalia Pasyuga, the husband-and-wife duo behind the (the weekly takes its name from the local river) have a survival algorithm. Oleksiy, 56, drives. Natalia, 53, listens out of the passenger window for the drones that grow stealthier with every day. They say they are careful, though they know they are kidding themselves. Delivering the paper to the last remaining residents of the village is not a rational exercise, but a love affair. The tears of subscribers make it worth it, Ms Pasyuga says: “They grab the paper and hold it to their nose to smell the fresh newsprint.”For its 2,500 readers, the is more than a news source; it is a connection to the outside world. Most of Ukraine’s border villages now have no electricity or mobile connection. When televisions work, they pick up Russian channels. The Pasyugas say they feel obliged to stay to debunk the propaganda, though they evacuated their offices from Velyka Pysarivka in March after a glide bomb smashed their car and half the building. Six months later the Russians destroyed the other half, during attacks that coincided with Ukraine’s advance into Russia’s Kursk province just to the north. Now the is put together in a library in the nearby town of Okhtyrka. It is printed and hand delivered to front-line villages in a car the couple borrow from their son.When your correspondent calls, the Pasyugas are preparing a special Christmas issue. They already know what they want: uplifting stories to raise the morale of their weary readers. For once, there will be no obituaries of the local boys lost in battle. The will be left out too, though that is less unusual. The Pasyugas say they know “too much” to accept the official celebration of the offensive as “Ukraine’s great and only triumph of 2024”. They choose silence instead.At a command post to the north, Major Ivan Bakrev is candid about Ukraine’s troubles in the salient. The artillery commander in the 82nd Air Assault Brigade says Vladimir Putin’s men are tightening the screws, and that was so even before began to join the battle. The Russians enjoy a “massive” advantage in almost everything—men, artillery, machines—and switch between mechanised and infantry assaults to powerful effect. Ukraine has already lost “about half” of the territories it once controlled. The reverses began when Ukraine swapped out elite units for less hardened ones in late September; that was a mistake, the major reckons. Now the Russians are trying to choke off their main grouping from Ukraine proper by attacking on their east and west flanks. “Every unit in Kursk has switched to defence,” he says.The urgency of Russia’s counter-attack appears tied to Donald Trump’s impending inauguration. Mr Putin wants Kursk to be a done deal by January 20th, rather than an embarrassing topic for discussion. Volodymyr Zelensky seems equally determined to retain the pocket as a bargaining chip. The Ukrainians are holding on, though the conditions on (and under) ground are getting grimmer. “Rain, slush, snow, cold, mud, beetles, worms, rats and glide bombs,” says Ruslan Mokritsky, a 33-year-old non-commissioned officer in the 95th Air Assault Brigade. The Russians can drop as many as 40 glide bombs on one position in the space of a few hours, he says. “In Kursk, death is always close; it practically holds your hand.”Mr Mokritsky, whose elegant handlebar moustache is a reminder of his more comfortable civilian life as a restaurateur in central Ukraine, is surprisingly unfazed. Ukraine has so far found ways to respond to new challenges—even Russian chemical attacks, he says. “If the Death Star showed up above us, we’d figure a way out.” He admits to only one fear: what would happen to his two young children if he were “two-hundreded”, the military code for being killed in action. The kids are never far from his mind. He splashed out on iPads to slip under their pillows for St Nicholas Day, the traditional family celebration on December 5th and 6th. The same night, he placed twigs under his comrades’ pillows, a punishment usually dished out to naughty children. The joke brought a rare moment of laughter in the dugout.Four and a half months in may be too early to judge the Kursk operation. Born at a moment of desperation for Ukraine, whose commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, was facing the sack, the incursion did not achieve its goal of diverting troops from Russia’s main effort in Donetsk province. It has cost Ukraine some of its elite troops. But it did ease the pressure elsewhere, and offered Ukraine a rare political fillip in . The soldiers seem to believe the counter-invasion was worth it, if only for giving the Russians a dose of their own medicine. “When I stepped foot in Kursk, I understood what they felt when they entered Ukraine,” says Sergeant Mokritsky. “Let them die and rot on their own lands, and the more of them the better.”Back in Okhtyrka, Oleksiy Pasyuga says that the soldiers’ struggle puts his own worries into perspective. His five hryvnia ($0.12) margin on the 15 hryvnia cover price is enough to keep his team in business, he says. He is determined not to be the man who ends thes 95-year history. There is not much of a cushion, no adverts, no excess, so the paper’s Christmas edition will be the same lean eight pages as usual. They have decided to lead with a feature on the soldiers’ New Year: how they will mark it, what they might eat. For Major Bakrev, the answer is simple enough. On New Year’s Eve he will be at work; he will not be celebrating while his men freeze in the trenches. “Maybe I’ll mark it with a couple of volleys of our guns,” he quips. Officer Mokritsky, who is likely to spend the night underground, shrugs. The soldiers on the front line will celebrate as best they can. “Maybe we’ll have Coca-Cola.”