He shows me video taken with a phone of their very last trip, as Ukrainian forces retreated from Russia’s Kursk region. It shows them making their way past dozens of burnt out military and civilian vehicles.

A soldier armed with a shotgun, their last line of defence, scans the horizon for Russian drones. Out of nowhere, one flies towards the back of their truck. Sparks fly, but they keep on going.

Artem says they were lucky – the explosive charge was not big enough to stop them.

Another truck nearby was less fortunate. It was already in flames.

Artem admits Ukraine’s retreat from Sudzha, the largest town Ukraine held in Kursk, was “not well organised”.

“It was pretty chaotic,” he tells me. “Many units left in disarray. I think the problem was the order to withdraw came too late.”

It wasn’t helped, he says, because units were operating without proper communications. The Starlink satellite systems they normally rely on didn’t work inside Russia.

The 27-year-old soldier still views the Kursk offensive as broadly successful. Artem says it forced Russia to divert its forces from the east. Most of Ukraine’s troops still managed to escape in time – even if for many it was on foot.

But he believes Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russian territory, launched last August, was too deep and too narrow – relying on just one main road for supplies and reinforcements.

While Artem and his men were fleeing for their lives, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were talking by phone about trying to bring the war to an end. Artem says he finds that “absurd”.

“To me these calls between Trump and Putin are just surreal,” he says. “Trump wants to end the war because he promised to do it – and Putin wants to deceive Trump to continue his war. I can’t take their conversations seriously.”

Artem, whose home is in the now Russian-occupied Luhansk region, tells me he feels disappointed with the US and Trump. “What can I feel when they just want to give away my home?”

Artem says he never believed that Putin would be willing to trade any part of Russia for Ukraine’s occupied territories. But he still believes the Kursk offensive was important to protect its own border. Ukrainian troops may have been forced to retreat, but they still occupy high ground just over the border with Sumy.

Ukraine is continuing its cross-border raids – not just into Kursk, but Belgorod too.

Serhiy’s assault battalion helps plan these attacks – finding a way through Russian minefields and anti-tank obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth”.

We joined him on a night-time mission to locate and recover armoured vehicles in need of repairs. It’s the safest time to move close to the Russian border.

Serhiy himself is no stranger to Russia: he was born there. He now has Belorussian citizenship, but he chose to fight for Ukraine. He justifies Ukraine’s incursions into his former home. Russia too, he says, has been trying to create a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.

Travelling in his Ukrainian-made armoured vehicle, Serhiy still lists the likely threats, now we are less than 10km from the Russian border: glide bombs, rockets and artillery, and drones fitted with thermal imaging cameras.

His own vehicle is fitted with electronic counter-measures to jam enemy drones, but even those won’t work against drones operated via fibre optic wires. Those can’t be stopped, though on some routes Ukraine has now erected netting to try to catch the drones before they can hit their target.

Our original search near the Russian border for a damaged US-made Bradley armoured vehicle is abandoned when Serhiy receives intelligence that Russian drones are operating nearby. Instead, he tries to locate another broken-down Bradley where the risks will be smaller.

He and his driver still have to overcome obstacles along the way. Trees and branches lie strewn across their path – remnants from a recent Russian air strike. We see several more explosions in the distance, briefly turning the night sky orange.

Serhiy eventually finds his broken-down Bradley. It’s already been retrieved from the battlefield across the border and has been loaded onto a lorry to be taken back for repairs.

The Bradley commander confirms to me that they’ve been fighting in Russia. He describes the situations across the border as “difficult, but we’re holding on”.

The Bradley is another reminder of Ukraine’s reliance on US military support. That now seems less certain with Trump’s focus on peace talks. Serhiy says it’s already clear to him that there’s “haggling behind Ukraine’s back”.

I ask Serhiy if he thinks European nations can fill any void left by the US. Is a European “coalition of the willing” enough to guarantee Ukraine’s security?

“I think if America doesn’t help Ukraine, then a ceasefire will be agreed soon – but on extremely unfavourable terms for Ukraine,” Serhiy replies.

“Europe clearly cannot resolve this conflict alone. They’re not strong enough. They’ve been focussing on their own economies instead of thinking about security.”

Serhiy says he wants the war to end. Like many Ukrainians, he would like to see peace – but not at any price.

In a statement, the ministry said efforts to destroy the Ukrainian attack groups were ongoing. Officials in Ukraine have also suggested an operation is under way.

Ukraine first launched its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August last year, seizing a chunk of territory.

In recent months, Russian forces have made big gains in the area, pushing the Ukrainians back, but failing to eject them entirely.

In a statement posted on Telegram on Sunday, Russia’s defence ministry said: “At around 9am Moscow time, in order to stop the offensive by the Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counter-attack by an assault detachment consisting of two tanks, one counter-obstacle vehicle, and 12 armoured fighting vehicles.”

Several Russian military bloggers gave more details about the attack, saying it was launched from the Ukrainians’ base at Sudzha towards the villages of Berdin and Bolshoye Soldatskoye, a district centre on the way to Kursk city.

The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said there “was good news from Kursk Region” and that Russia was “getting what it deserves”.

Ukraine’s top counter-disinformation official Andriy Kovalenko said in a Telegram post on Sunday: “The Russians in Kursk are experiencing great anxiety because they were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them.

“It’s unclear whether the offensive is sufficiently large-scale to lead to any significant changes on the frontline.

Russian blogger Yury Podolyaka said the operation may have been diversionary, while another, Alexander Kots, did not rule out that the main attack could be launched somewhere else.

Kyiv’s forces are reportedly suffering from manpower shortages and have been losing ground in the east of Ukraine in recent months, as Russian troops advance.

It comes as the Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched another drone attack on Ukraine overnight.

It said it had shot down 61 drones over Kyiv, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, and Khmelnytskyy regions.

There were no direct hits, but a few houses were damaged in Kharkiv Region by an intercepted drone, the air force said.

In November, Ukraine reported its troops had engaged in combat with North Korean troops in the Kursk region.

The appearance of North Korean soldiers was in response to a surprise attack launched across the border by Ukrainian troops in August, advancing up to 18 miles (30km) into Russian land.

Moscow evacuated almost 200,000 people from areas along the border and President Vladimir Putin condemned the Ukrainian offensive as a “major provocation”.

After a fortnight, Ukraine’s top commander claimed to control more than 1,200 sq km of Russian territory and 93 villages.Some of that territory has been regained by Russia.

This comes after Ukrainian officials said Moscow had launched a fresh missile attack on Kyiv, damaging a building hosting several embassies.

In Russia, the acting governor of the Kursk region said in addition to those killed, several were taken to hospital following the attack on the town of Rylsk.

Alexander Khinshtein said a cultural centre, a fitness complex, a school and homes were damaged in the strike which took place at 15:30 local time (12:30 GMT).

Ukrainian troops still hold parts of the Kursk region after launching a surprise incursion in August.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Russia’s strike in the capital had affected the diplomatic missions of Albania, Argentina, North Macedonia, Palestine, Portugal and Montenegro. It is unclear whether the building housing them was directly targeted.

At least one person died and nine others were injured in the strike which damaged a number of buildings in the city, Ukraine’s military said. It is not thought that any of the embassy diplomats were injured.

In a verified video filmed in the Pecherskyi District, Kyiv’s second oldest Roman Catholic church St Nicholas Cathedral is shown with windows shattered following a nearby blast.

Ukraine’s military said Russia launched 65 drones and missiles across the country overnight, with most shot down.

One man in Kyiv, who said he was the owner of a restaurant that suffered extensive damage following the attack, was filmed cursing the Russians as “beasts” as he surveyed the charred shell of a building in front of him.The video was widely shared on social media.

Oksana, another resident, sent the BBC photos of her destroyed apartment, with the windows blown in and glass and brickwork strewn across the floors.”I don’t understand how I survived,” she said.

“My balcony flew away, half my walls are gone. My neighbour is in such shock she can’t even speak. I have no words for the people who did this.”

A local journalist at the scene told the BBC that one of the buildings nearby had been used by the Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU, and was likely to have been the target of the strikes, although much of the damage seen by the BBC had affected residential buildings.

In a statement confirming the attack, the Russian Defence Ministry said missiles had been launched at an SBU “command post” in response to a strike on a chemical plant in Russia’s Rostov Region two days ago.

But there is also speculation in Kyiv that Friday’s attack could be linked to the killing of a Russian general, Lt-Gen Igor Kirillov, in Moscow on Tuesday.

Friday’s attack come one day after Vladimir Putin’s end-of-year press conference and phone-in show, in which he threatened to launch more ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital.

There is concern in Kyiv that Russia could use a so-called Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile to hit the capital. Moscow test-fired the missile on the city of Dnipro earlier this month.

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian authorities issued an air alert linked to the possible launch of an Oreshnik missile, and urged people in Kyiv to urgently seek shelter. It turned out to be a false alarm.