Exactly one year ago, on August 6, 2024, Ukraine shocked the world by launching an operation on the territory of Russia’s Kursk region. For the first time in history, a non-nuclear country seized part of a nuclear state’s territory – and continues to hold positions there after a year of fierce fighting.

Over the past year, the enemy has lost tens of thousands of soldiers, been forced to beg for help from North Korea – which sent its troops to Russian territory – and the reputation of the “invincible” Russian army, so carefully built by the Kremlin over the years, has been shattered. OBOZ.UA publishes a photo report from the Kursk region, taken during the period when the Russian city of Sudzha was under the control of Ukrainian soldiers.

What is known about the course and consequences of the Kursk operation

“This was the moment when the world saw that true power is determined not by the number of warheads, but by the determination of a people to defend their land and strike back,” – from a speech by a Ukrainian military analyst on the anniversary of the operation.

After crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border on August 6 last year, Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defenses, advanced deep into enemy territory, and disrupted its logistics.

At the peak of the operation, according to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukrainian forces controlled up to 1,300 square kilometers of territory in the Kursk region. In particular, the city of Sudzha came under the control of the Defense Forces, from where Ukrainian and Western journalists produced numerous reports.

Interestingly, the greatest destruction in this district center occurred not when the Ukrainian “occupiers” entered, but when the Russian “liberators” shelled their own town and fellow citizens with everything they had – including bombing it with glide bombs (KABs).

The significance and results of the Kursk operation are hard to overestimate. According to estimates by Ukraine’s military command, over the past year, Russia has lost more than 77,000 troops killed and wounded in that area. Among those losses are around 4,000 North Korean soldiers, whose deployment on Russian territory Moscow had requested from Pyongyang.

The Kursk operation also dealt a heavy blow to Russia’s military arsenals. Over the course of the year, 7,236 units of Russian weapons and military equipment were destroyed or damaged in the Kursk region. These included 211 tanks, 1,083 armored fighting vehicles, 907 artillery systems, 1 aircraft, 3 helicopters, 15 air defense systems, and 2,795 vehicles.

Over the course of the year, Ukrainian defenders captured 1,018 Russian soldiers in the area, which made it possible to bring home hundreds of Ukrainian heroes — many of whom had been held in Russian captivity since 2022.

In addition, the unexpected shift of the war onto Russian territory forced Moscow to pull troops away from parts of the front in Ukraine and disrupted the aggressor’s plans to launch offensives on Sumy and Kharkiv. The Russians were only able to intensify their actions in these Ukrainian regions after they managed — with North Korea’s help — to push Ukrainian forces out of most of the territory they had previously controlled.

However, even today, a year after the start of the Kursk operation, part of the Glushkovo district in the Kursk region remains under the control of the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

Which means it’s still too early to put a full stop to this story.