Russian Counteroffensive to Ukrainian Counteroffensive in Kursk

"We will hold." Everything is under control."

"The situation is serious, everything is being shelled, and the road on which supplies were brought is no longer usable. It's under fire."

"Drones are already everywhere in Sudzha. But we are in control. We are holding."

Ukrainian commander: call name 'Boxer'

 

"The longer they hold Kursk, the weaker Putin becomes."

"The longer they hold Kursk, the better defended Ukraine will be."

British Defence Secretary John Healey

Ukraine is fighting hard to repel the Russian invaders, but they are slowly making gains  Getty Images

 

The surprise move by Kyiv to have its military counteroffensive focus on the Kursk region inside Russia, relatively close to the border with Ukraine, saw the Ukrainian military tasked to that distracting mission, make inroads in a region with paltry few defences, pushing back the Russian defence forces, and managing to take a huge swath of Russian territory under Ukrainian command, taking possession of 100 villages, necessitating the movement of tens of thousands of Russian citizens departing their homes in favour of sheltering elsewhere.

This military gambit was a gamble, but its success buoyed Ukrainian spirits, while Kyiv waited to see if Moscow would redirect troops from the front lines to the Kursk region, giving some relief to the embattled Ukrainian city of  Pokrovsk, important to Ukraine as a logistics hub. Russian attacks have destroyed critical infrastructure, the city left without gas for cooking or heat, and potable water for the residents still remaining, some 18,000 in number including over 500 children.

Moscow did, after months of Ukrainian advances in the Kursk region, redeploy troops to the area, launching their counteroffensive to retrieve parts of Kursk region occupied by Ukrainian forces. Addressing the issue Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated the Russian "counteroffensive actions went according to our Ukrainian plan", declining to elaborate. There was, concurrently, an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine where some of the 600 prisoners of war taken during the Kursk advance were returned to Russia.

 

Ukrainian troops are now at risk of encirclement on the front line near Pokrovsk  Reuters

 

Of the original 500 square miles within which were 100 settlements under Ukrainian military control, the new Russian counteroffensive has managed to retake a limited number. A report issued by the Institute for the Study of War reported evidence of some Russian advances, but the size, scale and outcome "are unclear and the situation remains fluid".

Back in Pokrovsk, some 20,000 residents have fled the oncoming Russian military with the final evacuation train. "Evacuation is the only ... choice for civilians", stated Donetsk regional Governor Vadym Filashkin. Near the Donetsk front lines two Red Cross vehicles prepared o distribute wood and coal to warm winter homes were hit by shelling, leaving three dead.

Civilians are fleeing the area as Russian forces approach  Getty Images

PUTIN: UKRAINE TRYING TO 'DESTABILIZE' RUSSIA

"As a result of targeted shelling with the use of rocket and artillery weapons against residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in the Karyzh village ... a third bridge over the Seym River was damaged."

Russia's Investigative Committee

 

"We have now achieved an extremely important ideological shift: the naive and illusory concept of so-called ‘red lines’ regarding Russia that dominated the assessments of the war by some of our partners has crumbled these days somewhere near Sudzha [seized Russian town, by Ukraine forces]."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a destroyed bridge across the Seim River at the Russian town of Glushkovo, in the Kursk region, on Saturday. (Planet Labs PBC/The Associated Press)

Russian President Vladmir Putin, assessing the Kremlin's war against Ukraine, condemns Kyiv for its 'terrorism' and its hostile intentions toward Russia leading to 'destabilization'. 

 

Russia's commitment to its 'special military operation' that really began in 2014 when it 'destabilized' its neighbour by annexing Crimea and most of the Donbas, since then destroying Ukraine's energy systems, shelling civilian infrastructure, claiming them to be military bases when its artillery aims for hospitals, schools, shopping centres, and in its unabated attacks that are truly war crimes killing thousands while forcing millions of Ukrainians to become refugees, is affronted when Ukraine responds.

Ukrainian forces have opened a new front in Russia's Kursk region, and have now succeeded in destroying three of the bridges crossing the Seym River in Western Russia. Kyiv's Kursk invasion has raised the morale of the population in Ukraine, sick of this war against their nation, raging over Russia's appropriation of Ukrainian geography. 

 

While Ukraine celebrates its incursion into Russian territory, eastern Ukraine is experiencing the real potential to lose the large and important city of Pokrovsk.

If the Kursk incursion was a well-planned and -executed scheme to provoke the Kremlin to ease  up around Pokrovsk and dispatch Russian troops to the Kursk area for a defensive action, that result appears not to have occurred. Not yet. 

 

Russian tacticians may yet rethink their refusal to detract from their push toward Pokrovsk, to secure the entire Donbas region. However, given the reality of those damaged/destroyed bridges having the potential to trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance and the Ukrainian border, a mind-changing response may yet occur.

 

The situation does appear to be impeding Russia's response to the incursion of Kursk, launched on August 6. Two videos of bridges over the Seym being hit were posted by Ukraine's Air Force commander over the weekend. While Planet Labs PBC published satellite photos of the bridges, The Associated Press confirmed the destruction of a bridge in the town of Glushkovo.

As well, it was confirmed on Monday by a Russian military investigator that Ukraine had "totally destroyed" one bridge and damaged another two in the area, even as the full extent of the damage remained unclear. A later analytic investigation confirmed that the 'damage' is no longer 'unclear', the bridges are destroyed.

Moreover, the Ukrainian army since its incursion into the Kursk region has captured 1,250 square kilometres and along with that, 92 Russian settlements. In a turnabout, resulting in tens of thousands of Russians fleeing the encroaching Ukrainian military, finding themselves experiencing the kind of dislocation that Ukrainians have been subjected to for several years. 

President Zelenskyy spoke of the operation's aim as that of a buffer zone being created, one meant to prevent future attacks on his country from across the border. Russian state news agency TASS, reported 17 people were killed,140 wounded during the incursion by the Ukraine military. That too bespeaks, to a much smaller degree, mirroring in part what Ukrainians have been forced to go through by Russia's territorial invasion.

Over the past 24 hours, according to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, over 500 people had been forced to abandon areas in the Kursk region; a total of 122,00 Russians have been resettled elsewhere since the Ukrainian attack. As well, a gigantic fire burned for a third consecutive day following a Ukrainian drone hit of an oil depot in the town of Proletarsk, burning across an area of a hectare.

Ukrainian push into Russia is 'catastrophic' for Putin's plans  Still from video/CBC