Battle of Kursk II - 08 August 2024 - Day 3
The invasion of the Ukrainian military in the Kursk region of Russia caught the Russian army by surprise. For the first time, the army of another country invaded the territory of the Russian Federation since the Great Patriotic War. Bloomberg writes that this episode showed the fragility of the defense of the Russian border. This raised the Ukrainian fighting spirit. The agency emphasizes that the operation undermined the Kremlin's carefully constructed image of Vladimir Putin as a "protector of ordinary Russians." Instead, the war that the head of the Kremlin started in Ukraine is now increasingly spreading to the territory of Russia. "For Ukraine, this is likely to strengthen Kyiv's argument that American and European allies should not fear the Kremlin's threats of escalation and that it should be allowed to fight Putin in any way it sees fit to hasten the end of the war." - emphasized the journalists.
During the operation in the Kursk region of Russia, the Ukrainian military broke through two lines of fortifications in one day. The Russian authorities built them during 2.5 years of full-scale war, spending 15 billion rubles. This is written by Russian mass media "Agentstvo". The publication states that the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and the regional border department of the FSB took part in the construction of the defense lines.
Captain 1st Rank (Reserve) Vasily Dandykin believes that the current conflict is not like the Great Patriotic War, when entire tank corps and divisions went into battle. According to him, the battlefield is "reigning with drones, kamikaze drones and artillery." "In such conditions, the best solution is the actions of small assault groups with the support of aviation and artillery - exactly what Russian troops are doing now. We see that there is progress - both near Chasovy Yar, and in New York, and in other directions. Russian troops occupy key heights there, and our artillery operates from them. The situation is becoming critical for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Because they are losing their previously prepared positions and dispersing their reserves," Dandykin told NEWS.ru.
OSINT analyst Brady Afrik, who compiled a map of Russian fortifications based on satellite images, noted two lines of defense in the Koreniv and Suzhan districts of the Kursk region — along the border and 5-10 kilometers from it. "Judging from the map of Afrik, the second line passed in front of Suja and 15 km from the village of Koreneve, where, according to Ukrainian and Russian sources, the armed forces had already entered. That is, it took the Ukrainians about a day to overcome the two lines of fortifications built by Russia during the war ", the journalists wrote.
The "Agency" assumed that one of the reasons for the rapid breakthrough of the fortifications could be the lack of personnel. They added that as early as September 2023, the Ukrainian Center of National Resistance showed aerial photographs of fortifications in the Kursk region. At that time, the center reported that there were no personnel and equipment at almost all the strongholds in the region. They said that almost all personnel were relocated to Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
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Locals were fleeing, shops were closing, & there were queues at gas stations. But in Lgov, Kursk Oblast,evacuation was halted because there was no fuel for a bus. Asked about the Kursk operation the Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary said that Ukraine is permitted to conduct cross border operations in Kursk & Belgorod Oblasts. “We don’t feel this is escalatory in any way. Ukraine is doing what it needs to do to be successful on the battlefield”. But Ukraine was still not allowed to conduct "deep" operations or strikes into Russia, refusing to define "deep".
Putin spoke with the acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexey Smirnov, and instructed him to provide all necessary assistance to the region's residents. First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov will oversee this work. The Russian leader emphasized that “the Kiev regime has undertaken yet another large-scale provocation, conducting indiscriminate shooting from various types of weapons, including missiles, at civilian buildings, residential buildings, and ambulances.”
As blogger Yuriy Podolyaka suggested in his Telegram channel, the results of the meeting will have serious consequences for Kyiv. "I haven't seen our president so angry for a long time... This doesn't bode well for some people," Podolyaka concluded. The blogger also commented on the statement that the enemy's advance had been stopped. The blogger suggested that "for now he (the enemy. — NEWS.ru) has definitely not been stopped," but this will happen "someday." Podolyaka expressed the opinion that the blocking of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the merit of the " guys at the front " and border guards who held the Sudzha checkpoint without heavy weapons "in the best traditions of their grandfathers."
Putin’s domestic policy team instructed the pro-Kremlin and state-run media to “avoid sensationalizing” coverage of the Ukrainian military’s incursion. But reporters were also encouraged to compare the ongoing fighting in the Kursk region to the World War II Battle of Kursk. Meduza sources in pro-Kremlin media outlets note that they received the order only on the afternoon of 08 August 2024, almost three days after the start of the Kursk Oblast raid. They assume that the Kremlin did not fully grasp the scale of the situation, so they could not draw up the guidelines more quickly. The Putin administration spent nearly three days deliberating on how the Russian media should cover the military operation in Kursk Oblast. They have decided to draw comparisons to the 1943 Battle of Kursk and to reassure the public that Putin "will not leave anyone in trouble".
The Sever Battlegroup and Federal Security Services (FSB) continued to destroy Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) units in the Sudzhansky and Korenevsky districts of the Kursk region, which directly border Ukraine, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. "Throughout the day, border defense units, in coordination with border guards, reinforcement units, and incoming reserves, have successfully prevented enemy advances through airstrikes, missile forces, and artillery fire," the ministry reported.
Since the beginning of hostilities in the Kursk direction, Russia claimed Kiev had lost 660 soldiers and 82 pieces of armored equipment, including eight tanks, 12 armored personnel carriers, six infantry fighting vehicles, 55 armored combat vehicles, and one engineering vehicle. In the past 24 hours alone, the UAF has lost up to 400 personnel and 32 armored vehicles, including a tank, four armored personnel carriers, three infantry fighting vehicles, and 24 Kozak armored combat vehicles.
The Russian Telegram channel Military Informant reported the Ukrainian force "includes as many as 4 mechanized brigades, 3 territorial defense brigades , a couple of airborne assault brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and several separate battalions and combined units ... It should be understood that if any of these Ukrainian Armed Forces units are actually operating in the Kursk region and its border areas, they were not sent there in full force . The total composition of such a monstrous group, if it were operating in full force, is estimated at tens of thousands of personnel and thousands of units of heavy equipment. Such an armada would certainly not have been hanging around Sudzha and Korenevo for three days, trying to reach Lgov through the surrounding villages, given the almost complete lack of defense of the Russian Armed Forces in this direction. Not to mention the fact that on just a couple of secondary roads currently controlled by the enemy, multi-kilometer traffic jams of tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, etc. should have already formed....
"It is not yet clear how stable the enemy's control is over the settlements that were passed by its forward detachments. Now the approaching Russian reinforcements are plugging the holes in the defense after the loss of border strongholds, trying to stabilize the situation. All this is reminiscent of the situation in the Kharkiv region in the fall of 2022. Chaos, lack of information, contradictory information. And for the General Staff, once again, it turned out completely unexpectedly that the lack of personnel, its poor training and supply in the direction lead to a rapid loss of positions.....
"Why such sudden breakthroughs of 10-15-20 kilometers are possible in some areas, while in others it is necessary to gnaw through the defense with a fight sometimes several meters a day. The answer to this is very simple - the front is wide, and there are not so many troops to support equally good defense or equally competent offensive everywhere. All these minefields, dragon's teeth, anti-tank ditches and other tricks make sense only in conjunction with a competently built fire system of units defending in neighboring fortifications.
"Unlike the SVO zone, where active military operations are constantly taking place, defensive lines in the "old" Russian regions are built on a residual principle. The trenches are mostly occupied by conscripts and other "secondary" servicemen. There are very few experienced personnel, people are equipped with modern means of reconnaissance and destruction (reconnaissance UAVs, FPV drones, artillery, heavy equipment, etc.) at an extremely low level.
"To put it simply, everything necessary goes first to where they are fighting, and not to where they are just sitting in the trenches for years and getting bored. This unfortunate necessity leads to the fact that secondary directions are extremely vulnerable to rapid attacks if the attacker has extra reserves for this. Ukrainian units were in such a situation in the border area of the Kharkov region this spring, and Russian units are now on the border with the Kursk region.
"Such attacks should be repelled not so much by those who are sitting in the trenches near the border and, in terms of their composition and weapons, are capable of resisting only a small sabotage and reconnaissance group, but by mechanized reserves located in the near rear, which is what is happening now. Another question is that over the years of standing on the border, it was possible to stick an online camera under almost every bush or pole (which the enemy did, for example, in the Kiev region), in order to more effectively monitor the situation and control the enemy's movements during a possible invasion, more densely set up minefields, etc., but what's done is done.
"The main question now is how quickly it will be possible to dislodge the enemy from where he has already managed to run and whether it will be necessary to pull in additional reserves for this, which were not originally intended for this."
The Sudzha, Korenevo and Psel stations in Kursk Oblast are temporarily closed to passengers, while in other areas of the region, trains are operating as normal, with increased security measures being taken, the Moscow Railway press service told RIA Novosti. "Train traffic in the Kursk region, with the exception of the Sudzhansky and Korenevsky districts, is operating as normal. The stations at Sudzha, Korenevo, and Psel are temporarily closed to passengers," the press service reported. "To ensure traffic safety, additional inspections of the infrastructure and training for personnel are being carried out," the company added.
The Telegram channel "Rybar" in turn wrote "Until April 2024, the Kursk region was the area of ??responsibility of the West group of troops: the "northerners" appeared later. In December 2023, Alexey Polyakov , the former commander of the 144th division during its "guards" period, was appointed responsible for the area. Polyakov was known for slowing down the advance of enemy troops during the collapse of the defense of the Western Military District in the Kharkov region in the fall of 2022.
"Polyakov lasted only a month in his position . After an inspection from the General Staff, Polyakov's work was considered successful (trenches were dug, close cooperation with volunteers, classes for training FPV drone operators). After a successful commander reported to the top, the Western Military District leadership recommended sending him to another problematic area. They said there was order there (to this we should also add the factor of personal hostility towards Polyakov, but we believe that there can be no place for this in the army).
"At the beginning of 2024, Igor Tomshin headed the tactical direction of "Kursk" . There were no comments on his work, it seems. But Tomshin did not have the necessary experience . But for the Western Military District command, he was a convenient person, writing correct reports, not requiring significant additional resources.
"After the "North" group of troops began an offensive in the Slobozhansky direction , the tactical direction was headed by Lieutenant General Esedulla Abachev . In the conditions of maximum emphasis on the offensive on Liptsy and Volchansk , as well as a revision of plans for a preemptive strike on Sumy , the number of entrusted forces, funds, as well as the ability to redistribute resources that were "divided up" in the interests of the advancing group and the defense of Belgorod, all this was not enough .
"At the same time, the media field began to be aggressively pumped up with successes near Kharkov and Donetsk . The theses that the Ukrainian formations are deprived of will, are ready to surrender, and are about to hold peace talks, began to appear more and more often in official reports .
"The reports from the Kursk tactical direction and the North group of forces about problems, about the enemy bringing up forces and preparing to strike with the aim of cutting off Belgorod from the north, were ignored against the backdrop of euphoria.
"All this once again confirms that after 2.5 years of the SVO, the planning and development of combat operations in the Russian Army works at the operational-tactical level at most . Unfortunately, despite all the efforts of great wise men and the "school" of the General Staff Academy, they were unable to hammer anything more into the heads of our domestic "red commanders"."
On August 8, Telegram channels wrote that elite fighters and veterans from the Wagner PMC were deployed to the Kursk region, and immediately began to destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Experts believe that the head of the Russian Defense Ministry, Andrei Belousov, "pulled an ace up his sleeve ." Military correspondent Yegor Guzenko, known by the pseudonym Thirteenth, reported on his Telegram channel that units of the Wagner PMC began redeploying their forces to the Kursk region on August 8 amid the activity of Ukrainian soldiers there. The fighters reportedly returned to Russia from Africa to destroy the positions of the Ukrainian side.
The author of the Telegram channel Condottiero, a veteran of the Wagner PMC, confirmed the arrival of the Wagners and clarified that they returned to Russia from Africa. "Morning vibe. 'White uncles from Africa' have already partially arrived in Kursk," Condottiero specified.
Ukrainian officials have not officially confirmed the operation, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening address on August 8 that Russia needed to "feel" the consequences of its invasion. "Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done," Zelenskiy said, without directly referring to the offensive.
Moskovsky Komsomolets spoke with the chairman of the board of the All-Russian organization "Officers of Russia", retired lieutenant colonel Roman Shkurlatov. He said "it is good that we are already using the correct terms. Because this is a real military operation. This is not a breakthrough of sabotage and reconnaissance groups. This is not sabotage, these are not "tiktokers" who just came to take pictures near buildings with signs of government institutions on our territory and leave. This is a serious military operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which is unfolding on the territory of our Kursk region....
"It is difficult to judge the enemy's plans. According to some information, they are trying to break through to the city of Kurchatov, where the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is located. According to other information, they will try to move towards Rylsk - this is the second regional center. But for now we can only guess about this." "The enemy, by the way, is learning from its mistakes and is using quite competent tactics: they are dragging forward the means of electronic warfare, jamming our communications. After that, they enter with assault groups. It will be worse if the enemy manages to pull up air defense to the front line. In that case, they will be able to close the sky and complicate the work of our bomber, attack and army aviation....
"The situation is not critical now, but alarming."
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