WP on the time needed for Russia to liberate its territories in the Kursk region (video)

The Washington Post newspaper calculated how long it would take Russia to recapture Kursk region.

The publication notes: If Russian troops continue to advance at the same speed as in other directions, they will need at least a year to recapture the lost territories in the Kursk region.

Meanwhile, for Kyiv, the successful operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Russian territory has psychological value, raising the morale of both Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. In addition, it showed the Russian military as weak and ineffective, writes WP August 9.

The Washington Post notes that the sudden breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the most serious challenge for Putin since the Wagner rebellion. The Ukrainian armed forces have already occupied more than 20 Russian border villages (as of Friday, August 9) and parts of at least one city, and are now advancing towards the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant.

The publication notes that Ukrainian brigades will have time to dig in at fortified positions, which is potentially will give Kyiv a powerful trump card in the event of an upcoming ceasefire or peace talks. Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says:

“Ukrainian forces have clearly advanced quite far in the Kursk region, but how much territory they control or intend to control remains unknown.”

Telegram channel Volyamedia is impartial
tells
what is happening in the Kursk region, comparing the events there with Balakleya in 2022. The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue the operation.
The peculiarity of the fighting there is that the Ukrainian army uses mobile armored groups, which have sufficient firepower to destroy Russian armored vehicles and tanks, and also carry infantry capable of quickly clearing Russian positions and acting as support for the “armor” in populated areas.

Something similar happened in the Balakleya area in the fall of 2022. Both there and in the Kursk region, the Russian Armed Forces had a “line of fortifications” only on paper. Both then and now, Armed Forces of Ukraine act quickly and at great depth, supporting the movement of armored groups with the work of drones (there are now dozens of times more of them than there were in the fall of 2022) and the actions of electronic warfare. Russian units are left without communication, do not understand where the enemy is, and orders from headquarters only worsen the situation, because they are based on outdated or embellished information.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces do not try to occupy populated areas, but simply pass through them after reconnaissance by drones and infantry, or bypass them. This makes it possible to take by surprise disparate Russian units that believe they are deep in the rear and do not expect the enemy to appear.

Since midday on August 8, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have begun to set up positions on the Rylsk-Sudzha and Sudzha-Kursk highways. Since Ukrainian units control most of the bypass and local roads, Russian troops can move almost exclusively along federal highways. The Russians are being pushed onto these same highways lack of maps and knowledge of the terrain among the commanders of newly arrived units. They don't have time to familiarize themselves with the situation (and how can they do that if even those who have been in the Kursk region since the first day of the Ukrainian offensive have a poor understanding of the situation) and are sent to occupy this or that point on the map, without having any idea whether the Ukrainian Armed Forces are there or not. The shortest and easiest way is to move along the highways.

This has already cost the Russian Armed Forces the destruction of a battalion column of the 44th Army Corps near the village of Oktyabrskoyethe destruction of about two dozen cars and several armored vehicles on the Kursk-Sudzha highway and on other roads.

According to the Russian commander of the unit, which was transferred to the Kursk region from eastern Ukraine on the evening of August 8, his men They were transported to Kursk without equipment (it was left in the occupied Ukrainian territories), the unit received tanks and infantry fighting vehicles already in the Belgorod region, and both the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were “naked”, without dynamic protection and other attachments. The condition of the equipment could not be determined; it was being transported on tractors. The staff major responsible for the unit's transfer demanded that they move in a column straight to Bolshoye Soldatskoye and only there unload the equipment from the platforms and deploy. As a result, the unit commander refused to follow the order and unloaded it in the Cheremoshnaya area, where the Russians had set up a tank storage base since the spring.

Those who were unable to argue or tell their staff majors to go to hell moved to the designated points and either died along the way from drone strikes or missiles they directed, or came under fire from Ukrainian armored vehicles, artillery, and infantry.

According to several Russian officers who arrived with reinforcements in the Kursk region, during the night and morning alone, the Russian Armed Forces lost up to 14 infantry companies and up to 25 armored vehicles and tanks due to their advance into unexplored terrain, some of which were simply captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in working order. There is no visual evidence of these losses yet, but they will almost certainly appear in the coming days. The Ukrainian side confirms the capture of captured equipment and new batches of prisoners. Map military operations from Russian sources as of August 10.

Z-channels write about the breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Belovsky district of the Kursk region several dozen kilometers deep into Russian territory. It is noted that Ukrainian troops are entering with a large number of armored vehicles, and fighting is currently underway near the village of Belaya. The governor of the Belgorod region confirmed the capture of the village of Poroz. There are no other details at the moment.

Regarding information The Time reports that the Ukrainian Armed Forces allocated 6,000 to 10,000 people for the operation in Kursk Oblast. If this information is true (which, naturally, is not the case), then such forces are insufficient for large-scale operations on Russian territory, such as a breakthrough to the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. The maximum is a consolidation in a number of border areas with a transition, over time, to defense, writes the publication “Strana”. Although no one can guarantee that the sources gave The Time the correct figure, and not a greatly underestimated one.

But even if the Ukrainian Armed Forces were really only a few in number and they do not achieve major breakthroughs, Ukraine has already achieved a certain result. The efforts of the z-publics that are dispersing the “betrayal”, hysteria and panic have at least partially accomplished the task that The Time sources identified as the main goal of the offensive – “to change the narrative that Ukraine is losing the war”. At the same time, a “weak link” in the stability of the Russian state system was discovered – the z-publics and their curators from the “Kremlin towers”, who have demonstrated their readiness to “rock” the situation in the country. However, if in the near future Russian troops manage to turn the tide in the border area, Putin will have the opportunity to present the situation as a great victory and not let Kyiv reap even the symbolic and informational fruits. Although it is too early to talk about anything specific in the Kursk region. The situation there is still far from the outcome.

Source link