Russians bombarded with trench-digging job ads

Russia is advertising for personnel to dig trenches along its border regions, according to a new report, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Kyiv’s troops advanced more than a mile in a handful of hours.

At least 30 ads calling for trench builders in Kursk were found on a Russian job portal in the past few days, the BBC‘s Russian service reported on Wednesday. The majority of the ads called for shift workers to pitch in with building various types of “fortifications,” including trenches and anti-tank structures, the outlet reported.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Ukraine is more than a week into a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, kicking off the most significant advance into Russian territory since the start of the war on February 24, 2022.

Moscow’s senior officials said its troops, under a “counter-terrorism operation” led by the Russian federal security service, the FSB, have halted Ukrainian gains.

Yet Russia’s community of prominent military bloggers, often used as sources of information on the war not made public by the Kremlin, Western analysis and Kyiv officials indicated continued Ukrainian progress in Kursk in recent days.

The Ukrainian military currently controls 74 settlements in Kursk, Zelensky said on Tuesday, as Kyiv officials more openly acknowledge the incursion following days of silence. Ukraine’s army chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Monday that Kyiv controlled just under 400 square miles of Kursk. There is some doubt among Western analysts over whether Ukraine has a full grasp on that territory.

In a later statement on Wednesday, Zelensky said Kyiv was “advancing in the Kursk region, one to two kilometers in various areas since the beginning of the day.” That would mean Ukraine advanced just over a mile in the region in the space of a few hours.

A second Russian region, Belgorod, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday. Belgorod is also on the border with Ukraine, southeast of Kursk.

The BBC reported over the weekend that satellite images showed Russia was building new lines of defenses around the Kursk nuclear power plant, which sits on the edge of the town of Kurchatov and west of the regional capital, Kursk.

One job ad for “round-the-clock” trench-digging described the site of employment as around the city of Kursk, helping to form a “second line of defense,” according to the BBC.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank has said Russia tipped “considerable resources” into building fortifications along the border in Kursk, but that the personnel to defend them were not in place.

One Ukrainian soldier in the Sumy region overlooking Kursk told the BBC that when Ukrainian troops crossed over the border, “almost immediately they reached the western outskirts” of Sudzha, one of the targeted border towns in Kursk.

The overall goals of the operation, and what the next steps will be, are unclear. However, Kyiv has indicated that it is “not interested in taking the territory of the Kursk region,” but that the incursion is designed to protect Ukraine from highly destructive aerial strikes launched from the Russian territory.

“Ukraine is defending itself and the lives of its people in border communities while also taking active steps on Russian territory,” Zelensky said.

Ukraine likely planned to reduce Russia’s fighting ability inside Ukraine with the incursion, said Robert Murrett, a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral and professor of practice at Syracuse University. With Russia’s response still not fully formed, the coming two to three days “will be critical for both sides,” Murrett said.

Reports from Ukrainian and Russian sources suggested on Wednesday that Ukraine had captured four villages in Kursk, although it could not be independently verified.