You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.

My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of Warren the Rocks, and I'm sitting here with Michael Kaufman, who is fresh back from his latest research trip to Ukraine.

Thanks for joining the show, Mike.

Thanks for having me back.

So I want to get into some of your impressions from your trip later in the episode,

but first, let's start with the state of the front, the state of the battlefield.

Russian forces have retaken maybe close to 40% of what Ukraine originally held in Kursk.

Most recently, they've launched another set of attacks in the northwestern part of that pocket.

Ukrainian forces have been anticipating the use of North Korean troops as light infantry

in support or more accurately employed by Russian airborne and other units as expendable forces on that part of the front.

I think so far that the Ukrainian military is still holding that pocket, but it's a difficult fight.

In Kursk, it's quite hard to entrench or consolidate the line of defense there, and there's only

one main resupply road running from Ukrainian territory into

the main town of Sousja that they hold. So logistically, it's also quite constrained. They are

holding still a pocket there, but I think it's very slowly likely to shrink. In Harkiv, the front

of Stable, in Kupianz, on the left side of the Oskill River, Ukrainian forces are slowly

being pushed back, and I think there's a good chance in the coming months they're going to lose

their positions on the left bank that is east of the Oskill River. Kupiansk itself is under artillery

threat, but I wouldn't say that the situation there is particularly unstable. Looking at the

most problematic part of the front, right,

which is the southern part of Deneutsk,

and that includes at least three operational directions.

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