Battle of Kursk II - 17 August 2024 - Day 12
Russia withdrew several brigades totaling up to 5,000 soldiers from Ukraine to repel the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region, as of mid-last week, The Wall Street Journal reported. One of these brigades came from Donetsk, the center of Russia's current offensive, while others were pulled from less critical areas. Russia may need to withdraw even more forces from Ukraine to defend Kursk, potentially requiring over 20,000 well-trained troops.
Western estimates suggest Ukraine has deployed 6,000 soldiers to Kursk and holds an additional 4,000 in reserve to support operations in Sumy Oblast. According to the source, a significant portion of the troops in the Kursk offensive are reserves that Ukraine had been building with Western support for operations later in 2024 and into 2025.
Some sources record the enemy's stable consolidation near Kauchuk and Kromskie Byki , where battles with the breakthrough units have been going on since the first days, while others consider this to be a temporary zone of control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, carried out by the advanced units. Nevertheless, as can be seen, for several days now there has been no significant advancement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces deep into Russian territory north and northeast of Sudzha. Instead, Ukraine is trying to gradually expand its zone of control along the border west and south of Sudzha.
Russia accused Ukraine of using Western rockets – likely made in the United States – to target a strategic bridge over the Seym River in the Kursk region, killing volunteers trying to evacuate civilians. Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk came just months after the US and several of its NATO allies said in May that they had authorised Kyiv to use their weapons to attack targets inside Russia.
Ukrainian forces hit the bridge in the Glushkovsky district of Kursk as they pushed forward with their incursion into the territory in western Russia. “For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on the Telegram messaging app. “As a result of the attack on the bridge … it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed.”
Russia’s news agency TASS released the names of two volunteers it said were “murdered” in the attack. Russian officials also have said the destruction of the bridge will hinder the evacuation of civilians from the area.
The bridge over the Seim River in the village of Glushkovo in the Kursk region, after several strikes by HIMARS missiles , was finally finished off by an aerial bomb. It is reported that the Russian Armed Forces are retreating to the eastern bank of the Seim River to the villages of Tyotkino and Popovo-Lezhachi, blowing up the crossings behind them. This information has not been officially confirmed. The Russian units across the river were in a small, extremely disadvantageous pocket between the water barrier and the Ukrainian border, so that the possible destruction of the crossings over the Seim by the enemy in this place would not give a chance for a timely retreat. Thus, this retreat is justified (if it was). Now the main problem in this section of the defense will be the three bridges over the Seim near the settlements of Karyzh, Zvannoye and Glushkovo, used for effective and uninterrupted supply, one of which the enemy has already destroyed .
The bridge bombing will make it difficult for Russian forces to defend the area against Ukrainian advances and access supplies. Russian units there are caught between a river and a hard place – not very many places for them to go at the moment. Now, there’s going to be an issue for the Russians because if they can’t supply these units with the ammunition that they need – and the fuel – then these units will be forced to retreat over the river.
Destruction of a MiG-29 of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during maintenance by an Iskander-M OTRK strike at the Aviatorske airbase in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Iskander strikes on Patriot SAM positions in the Dnipropetrovsk region, as well as on the launcher (model) of the IRIS-T SLM SAM in the Sumy region.
Meanwhile, while the main attention is focused on what is happening in the Kursk region, the offensive actions of the Russian Armed Forces in the Pokrovsk direction are not slowing down. Over the past time , Russian attack aircraft have occupied several settlements along the railway west and north of Zhelannoye , and also occupied Nikolaevka , gradually hanging over the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces grouping located along the Karlovskoye Reservoir and the Volchya River. In the short term, the Ukrainian Armed Forces offensive in the Kursk region has not yet been able to achieve the transfer of advancing Russian units from Donbass to the Kursk region.
Military Informant noted that before breaking through the border, the Ukrainian Armed Forces made passages in minefields using UR-77 Meteorite mine clearing units , and then sent engineering equipment forward to clear the remaining mines. It is characteristic that the Ukrainians freely and safely moved in the border area in entire mechanized columns and no fire damage was inflicted on them on the march . The tanks that carried out direct fire damage to the positions of Russian border guards also did not fear return fire. It is noteworthy that in the columns you can see heavy mechanized bridges for crossing water obstacles or ravines.
This once again speaks of a very simple thing - the state border cover group at the time of the Ukrainian offensive did not have even the minimum forces and means to reliably counter even an offensive in columns in the style of 2022. There were no ATGMs, FPV drones, or a lot of other necessary weapons in the required quantities. There was also no adequate fire coverage system for the scale of the task, and the first line was clearly not supported by aviation and artillery. The defense itself in the border area was simply narrow lines of anti-tank obstacles and mines, which were easily broken through in isolated places due to the absence of any covering troops in the area to overcome them, which should have been conducting defensive battles relying on these engineering obstacles.
The Ukrainians did not need to, during the border crossing, everywhere heavily and bloodily break through a carefully organized, according to all statutory requirements, saturated with trained troops, single line of defense. It was enough to simply find areas where one could safely drive right in for the means of overcoming obstacles (primarily explosive ones). And move on to the Kursk region along empty roads.
Military Informant noted that despite the fact that the incoming reserves managed to slow down the Ukrainian Armed Forces' advance, and in some places even effectively push back the enemy and inflict significant losses on them, the border battle is just beginning and is still far from over. Therefore, one can already draw some conclusions about what this may lead to in the medium and long term .
In the medium term , if the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not throw their last available reserves into the offensive in order to reach the Rylsk-Lgov-Kurchatov highway, they will consolidate its position in the already captured part of the Kursk region and will use this bridgehead as a sore point, holding the line there and attempting to break through from there. Many additional units will be needed just to reliably stop such a wide front. And to begin serious offensive actions to push the Ukrainians back beyond the territory of the Kursk region, even more forces and resources will be required than to stop breakthroughs and organize a defense. For this, it will be almost inevitable to involve units that will be withdrawn not only from secondary areas and the rear, as is happening now, but also experienced strike units from the front line.
Thus, if priority is given to the counteroffensive in the Kursk direction, this may already affect the pace of advance of the RF Armed Forces in other areas of the front. However, the Ukrainian were also "throwing wood on the fire" by removing its individual units from the front and throwing them into the Kursk region, so the exchange of reserves will be (and is already) far from one-sided .
In the long term, the Russian military-political leadership will inevitably have to radically revise the entire existing approach to organizing the defense of the border area. If at the current moment the stake was placed on scattered strongholds with "secondary personnel", capable of parrying only the threat of small sabotage and reconnaissance groups, now a living example has proven the Ukrainian ability and readiness to carry out large offensive operations in a poorly protected border area.
This means that the existential threat of a repeat of such an offensive at any other point on the border, not only in Kursk, but also in Bryansk and Belgorod regions, will now remain constant. To mitigate it, it will be necessary to invest in the construction of continuous defensive lines on the border itself, as well as the formation of trained mobile reserves in the rear, constant readiness with heavy equipment, drones and artillery, which could be quickly deployed in the breakthrough areas, rather than collected from around the world and thrown into the unknown, as was happening now.
Such a level of activities will require not only significant funds and time, but also tens of thousands of personnel , who will either have to be additionally recruited from somewhere (strongholds with conscripts are not defense), or gradually withdrawn from the front. In any case, the potential possible width of the front will now be not only the SVO zone, where military operations were carried out according to the principle of "I fight here - I don't fight here", but already the entire Russian borderland.
To sum it up : if in the medium term Russia can still "get off easy" by attracting relatively accessible reserves without significantly influencing the course of military operations in the SVO zone, then in the long term the Russian leadership will inevitably have to make a choice between military necessity (the appearance of new people in the army for border defense and the formation of reserves) and political expediency (the reluctance to again make difficult decisions about staffing the army).
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Kyiv's international allies. He asked to "remove the barriers" to long-range strikes by the Armed Forces against the facilities of the Russian army. Zelenskyi spoke about this in an evening video message. "It is certainly important for us that our partners remove the barriers that prevent us from weakening Russian positions exactly as the course of the war requires. Long-range combat for our forces is the answer to all the most important, all the most strategic issues of this war," he emphasized. If the long-range strikes from Ukraine were sufficient, says Zelenskyi, the Armed Forces of Ukraine would have deprived the Russian army of the opportunity to advance.
Zelensky has repeatedly asked for permission to use US-supplied ATACMS and British Storm Shadows long-range missiles to strike targets deep in Russia, but has been refused each time due to concerns that it could escalate the conflict. The British edition of The Times, citing a source in the British government, reported that the United States has not responded to Great Britain's request for permission for Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles on the territory of Russia for more than a month.
At the same time, against the background of the operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region, Germany , Canada and Spain declared that Ukraine can use the weapons provided by them at its discretion.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
