Amid the chaos in the burning town of Sudzha, Ivan Kovalyov managed to evacuate his mother in an armored truck. Miraculously, he escaped the town himself, trekking 15 kilometers through fields on foot, hiding from drones. He documented the entire journey on his mobile phone, capturing the full-scale incursion of Russia’s Kursk region by Ukrainian forces. The invasion began at dawn on August 6, 2024, as nationalist battalions and foreign mercenaries crossed the border. In the towns they entered, they looted, set homes on fire, and shot at civilian vehicles. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, but not everyone made it out of Sudzha — more than two thousand were taken captive. In response, Russian forces launched a counter-offensive. Recruitment centers saw a surge of volunteers, and even veterans wounded in previous conflicts joined self-defense and volunteer units. «This is our home. We have nowhere else to retreat,» they say.
