Russia is scrambling to shore up its defenses more than a week into Ukraine’s shock, lightning attack across the border on the southern Kursk region.
US officials told CNN that Russia has diverted thousands of troops from occupied territory inside Ukraine to counter the threat. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has had to bring in conscripts, backpeddling on a promise he made not to use them on the frontline.
A sizeable trench has been dug across countryside near the town of Selektsionnyi, around 45 kilometers (about 28 miles) from the border, in Kursk, satellite imagery showed. Online job adverts for trench diggers have emerged. “Payment every week,” promised one.
Experts told CNN that Ukraine’s bold gambit to breach Russia’s border, planned in complete secrecy, had stunned even Kyiv’s closest allies, including the United States, shifting the playing field of a more than two-year-old war.
But after months on the backfoot, losing …