I was at war, and it hit me very hard." A study by Verstka and Important Stories on the fate of conscripts who ended up in the Kursk region during the AFU offensive

"I was at war, and it hit me very hard." A study by Verstka and Important Stories on the fate of conscripts who ended up in the Kursk region during the AFU offensive

Exactly two years ago, on the night of August 6, Ukrainian troops launched a large-scale offensive in the Kursk region. Hundreds of conscript soldiers were stationed there; they had begun being sent to the border back in the spring. Many of them did not expect they could end up in a war zone, but in the first days it was they who took the main blow.

According to estimates by Verstka and Important Stories, in August and September 2024 at least 77 conscript soldiers were killed at the border. At the time of death, they were between 18 and 25 years old; most of those killed were 20-year-olds. More than 30 others are still listed as missing, and the search for their bodies continues.

Those who survived had to retreat; some hid in forests and swamps, feeding on rowan branches. Some went through captivity and developed severe PTSD. For example, Mikhail sleeps "for maybe 2 hours at most, maybe less."

"When I have some nightmare, visually it looks like I’m running somewhere in my sleep," the former conscript explains. "Once, they started trying to wake me up at that moment. And I get up, my pupils are dilated, and I don’t see what’s there in real life. It seems to me that the people in front of me are not people I know, but my enemy. Ukrainians are standing there."

Verstka and Important Stories reconstructed the events in the Kursk region and found out how the AFU incursion affected the lives of Russian soldiers.

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Verstka

Conscripts at War

In August 2024, hundreds of conscript soldiers faced the AFU offensive in the Kursk region. What happened to them is the subject of an investigation by Verstka and Important Stories