The battles of Kursk are back, those that marked the beginning of the end of the Nazi army against the then USSR: July 5, 1943. Hitler’s goal was to conquer the Soviet Union. Today’s goal of Ukraine against the Russian Federation expressed by Mykhailo Podolyac and therefore Volodymyr Zelensky is “to have a topic for negotiations with Russia” translated to take the nuclear power plant. “The invasion” started on August 6, 2024.
The rumors of the social sphere give Vladimir Putin very irritated, also because the Nazis at the time had planned to take Kursk after having conquered Belgorod and Kharkiv, Zaporizhizhia. Today as in 1943 everything was already planned but someone did not do their duty and this did not please the President.
About 10 days before the attack on the Kursk region, the intensity of the use of drones by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the use of artillery fire increased. If drones were measured in dozens, their attacks, over the past 10 days, were used in hundreds. A social media account from the Kursk region writes: “We have suffered small losses of equipment. Well, of course, they have accumulated a lot. Many UAV launch points were destroyed, cars and houses were burned. Well, the intensity of yagas – Ukrainian drones – also increased”.
In the attack on Kursk, the Ukrainian forces used a relatively new tactic for the Ukrainians themselves, they used and deployed new “ranger” units and conditionally new units trained according to a new scheme. They recently tested this tactic in the Kharkiv region.
Basically, this technique involves first properly “wiping” the sky from Russian eyes with UAVs of the air type in their starting sector. Then, under the cover of a barrage, they deploy direct electronic warfare assets almost on the front line.
Under the cover of direct electronic warfare forces, they deploy a huge number of UAVs, Mavic on non-standard boards that shift the frequency range. Rifles and electronic warfare are useless. Under the continuous barrage of high-precision FPV drones that arrive in swarms, they reduce the distance to the positions.
They enter and entrench themselves in empty and dismantled trenches in small groups of 4-6 people under the cover of UAVs. They move the electronic warfare line forward and repeat the pattern. To block the Ukrainian advance, the Russians disabled the GPS system in the area with a delay of three days after the attack. Lancet in action against armored vehicles.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians with a very low density of troops occupied the key sectors surrounded the Russian strongholds and captured them. Then they began to move in columns along deserted roads. The Russian social sphere notes: “That is, the AFU again found a very “subtle” point and hit it precisely.”
“There is nothing fundamentally new in such tactics: this is how the Ukrainian formations advanced to the Kharkiv region in the fall of 2022. Similarly, they tried to advance to the Belgorod region in March, but broke their teeth against the grouping stationed there, whose units turned out to be prepared for such a scenario.”
“And another common feature of all the cases described above was that the enemy’s preparations and plans were known, with continuous reports sent along the chain of command. So it is impossible to explain the events by a huge surprise, but rather by insufficient preparation, ignoring the impending problem and the notorious “maybe”.” The same accounts read.
Technically, a military analysis account describes: “The Ukrainian DRG operates in groups of three to six armored vehicles. While a third finds a strong point in battle, others bypass it, enter nearby settlements and set up ambushes. In addition, reinforcements and civilian transport are fired upon along the way, and after a short inspection the Ukrainian Armed Forces leave the populated areas.”
In response, the Russians ordered the volunteer units carrying out the task of neutralizing the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region Wagner’s “order 300”: “do not replenish the exchange fund.” That is, no prisoners are taken. Not only that, Moscow has taken up warplanes that the Ukrainians in the Kursk area do not have. The data from the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Ukrainian ones are not available, speak of: “945 servicemen and 102 armored vehicles, including 12 tanks, 17 armored vehicles, six infantry fighting vehicles, 67 armored combat vehicles and 12 vehicles, two self-propelled anti-aircraft fire installations, Buk M1 missile system and three field artillery guns”.
The Ukrainians, even if the Russians certainly speak per excess, they are losing a lot of men at the front and this is a problem for Kiev as it has a serious shortage of military personnel. Russian analyst Boris Rozhin says about the concealment of losses by the Ukrainian Armed Forces: “In the Kursk region, during the battles, the enemy suffers significant human losses. To hide this fact and reduce the demoralization of their forces, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have organized special groups to extract the bodies. This event is not typical for the Ukrainian side, as we can see after three years of hostilities”.
CNN itself says: “The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked the Kursk region without a clear strategic goal”. Among the hypotheses: “the operation on the territory of the Russian Federation is an opportunity to save the career of the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Alexander Syrsky. The Ukrainian command, whose actions have often been criticized for being slow and conservative, is now “playing a game of chance.”
“Ukraine’s decision to move most of its scarce military resources across the border with Russia — in pursuit of a headline-grabbing but still unclear strategic goal — marks a moment of desperation or inspiration for Ukraine. And perhaps this heralds a new phase in the war,” CNN adds.
Despite the lack of logic in this desperate operation, the Ukrainians are moving forward, but why? “The Kursk nuclear power plant is a completely viable topic for future negotiations as an exchange for something Kiev needs,” reads the pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian social sphere.
However, it is still written: “Most likely the answer lies elsewhere. For these two years, Kiev has been faced with the task of showing external sponsors where and what their money will go. In the broad sense of the word, money, since it is basically transferred to Kiev not in the form of caches, but in finished products: equipment, weapons, ammunition and other ammunition. In other words, in addition to completely objective indicators of the functioning of the Russian military machine, we also need media results. Therefore, the Kursk region, where, as it turned out experimentally, is practically unprepared for any external invasion. Probably the same as the Bryansk region. Russia does not have such an army to simultaneously hold the entire border and conduct a Northern Military District along the contact line of one and a half or even two thousand kilometers. In fact, the collisions themselves occur in a very small area, 50-70 kilometers wide. There is simply no strength to do more. Basic operations range from the maximum level of battalion to brigade”.
In short, the deaths in Kursk, according to the Russian social sphere, serve only as a catwalk. For the Ukrainian one, they are not there. In Ukraine, in fact, incredibly, the army is not talking about Kursk. He only talks about the Ukrainian front line. While Europe and now the Pentagon are saying that the attacks on Kursk are not an escalation of the war but are part of Kiev’s right to defend itself.
Meanwhile, on the Russian side, waiting for the resolution of the Kursk issue that will not end well for Kiev, even if Moscow feels the blow, they are self-critical: “It would be very desirable if the next audit of the combat control system was not limited to just dismissals, but included a thorough analysis of why this continues to happen again and again. Even after all the repeated changes of personnel in command positions.”
Graziella Giangiulio
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