Watch: Ukrainians hunted on the road of death

But details are starting to emerge of a disorderly and even chaotic retreat, with soldiers forced to hike back to Ukraine on foot and only move at night because of the constant threat of drone attacks.

“We have all the logistics here on [the] highway,” said one Ukrainian soldier. “Everyone knew that the [Russians] would try to cut it.”

Trump’s pause on intelligence-sharing earlier this month sped up the Russian counter-offensive to push Ukraine out of Kursk.

But the reality is that Russia first found Ukraine’s weak spot on a night in late December. It was the first time a Ukrainian vehicle was known to have been destroyed in a Russian attack on the R200.

What followed was months of intense bombardment as Russia clawed back more territory around the road inch by inch, impacting Ukrainian supplies, troop rotation and morale.

Ukraine’s inability to move freely along the highway was one of the primary reasons its withdrawal was so chaotic in places, according to insiders.

Constant Russian artillery and drone attacks left dozens of burnt-out vehicles — and corpses — scattered along the highway, creating so much congestion that it became near impossible to navigate.

Some soldiers, among the last to withdraw from the town of Sudzha — which lies at the end of R200 in Russia — were forced to flee back into Ukraine on foot.

One unit commander told The New York Times it had taken his unit two days to hike 20km from their positions in Kursk back to the Ukrainian border. By the time they had got back to the border, the positions they left had been filled by the rapidly advancing Russians.

Russian forces soon closed in on the highway, attempting to cut off Ukrainian troops entirely, leaving little opportunity for an orderly withdrawal, according to some accounts.

“This again came as a surprise to our command,” one soldier said on Telegram.

Indeed, there had been warnings. On March 8, one Ukrainian military blogger wrote: “The situation in the Kursk region is very difficult and could turn into a disaster if we don’t act urgently to clear the logistical routes.”

On March 9, a Russian FAB-3000 glide bomb was dropped on a bridge near the village of Kazachya Loknya in Kursk, which had been controlled by Ukraine, in a strike on Ukrainian supplies.

Three days later, as Ukraine tried to prevent the road from being completely shut off, the area was overwhelmed with Russian fibre-optic drones.

The drones, flown remotely 20km from their intended target, have a short range but are immune to Ukrainian jamming.

Two or three drones would pop up within a minute, one soldier said, either exploding in front of a vehicle or dropping onto the floor and acting as quasi-landmines.

Eventually, Ukraine’s commanders ordered their units to retreat.

“We almost died several times. Drones are in the sky all the time,” the soldier told the BBC.

Another soldier likened the withdrawal to “a scene from a horror movie”, with vehicles constantly being destroyed and some soldiers being killed in transit.

“The roads are littered with hundreds of destroyed cars, armoured vehicles and ATVs [all-terrain vehicles]. There are a lot of wounded and dead,” another soldier said.

Some Ukrainian troops are angry that commanders did not order them to withdraw weeks ago, when it would have been safer.

One soldier said they were unsure how commanders were going to evacuate the region “because all supply chains have been disrupted”.

Questions over the withdrawal raise further doubts about the rationale of the whole Kursk operation.

Russia’s bombardment of the R200 highway was not the only reason for Ukraine’s difficult withdrawal. A significant factor was Trump’s decision to pause intelligence sharing, according to one soldier, who said he could no longer fire US-supplied Himars rockets.

“We could not allow expensive missiles to be fired at the wrong target,” he explained.

The reintroduction of North Korean troops, who had been withdrawn from the battlefield in January, also put defensive lines under intense pressure. Pyongyang’s forces were initially killed in droves, but are now forming a highly effective fighting force.

“Many of them executed very smart tactical manoeuvres,” Boroda, an assault platoon commander, told The New York Times.

Russia’s breakthrough moment in Kursk came when troops sneaked behind enemy lines and walked for miles through a disused gas pipeline, from which they launched a surprise assault.

Ukraine claimed to have struck the pipeline, causing high losses for Russia, although the attack is thought to have contributed towards Kyiv’s decision to pull back its troops.

However, at no point were large numbers of Ukrainian troops encircled, according to those on the ground.

“It’s a lie,” said Kriegsforscher, a Ukrainian drone operator who fought in Kursk. “The retreat was generally organised but occasionally chaotic. There is no threat of encirclement, and no evidence suggests otherwise.”

Some reports suggest Ukrainian troops may have even been allowed to flee on foot.

“Basically, Sudzha’s taken, the Ukrainians are retreating, and we’re f***ing told not to touch them. Let them carefully slip out through the fields,” one Russian soldier said in a video posted on Telegram that could not be independently verified.

Putin had promised to spare Ukrainian forces in Kursk if they surrendered — although the Russian President has a history of making such a promise before ordering an ambush, as occurred during the invasion of Crimea in 2014.

On March 16, about two weeks after the start of Russia’s counter-offensive, Ukraine’s general staff finally confirmed the full withdrawal from Sudzha, days after Moscow claimed its capture.