Eleven Days Into Its Invasion of Russia's Kursk Oblast, Ukraine Captures a Second Major Settlement
Martynovka is 10 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border
Three days after fully capturing Sudzha, the Russian town six miles from the Russia-Ukraine border that has been the locus of Ukraine’s 11-day (and counting) invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Ukrainian forces have advanced into—and possibly past—the next nearest major settlement: Martynovka, four miles northeast of Sudzha and 10 miles from the border.
The Ukrainian advance could expand to more than 200 square miles the area of Kursk that’s under Ukrainian control. Battles are ongoing across another 250 square miles.
The first clear evidence Ukrainian troops were beyond Martynovka came on Aug. 17, when the Russian Akhmat Regiment posted a video of a first-person-view drone strike on a Ukrainian vehicle along the northern edge of the settlement.
Ukraine’s own drone operators prepared the battlefield in and around Martynovka. There were confirmed Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian vehicles—a truck and two BMP fighting vehicles—on the R200 road threading into Martynovka from the northeast on Thursday and Friday.
The Russians didn’t give up Martynovka without a fight. Russian drones struck several Ukrainian armored trucks on the settlement’s outskirts. A Russian air force Mil Mi-28 gunship helicopter prowled the area until it was shot down—seemingly by an FPV drone—in the early hours of the Ukrainian invasion.
But it appears Russian defenses in and around the settlement began to collapse on or just before Aug. 14. “Two companies of the 810th Separate Marines Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet were defeated and retreated from Martynovka,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported that day.
A drone from the Ukrainian army’s 225th Assault Battalion observed the Russian marines fleeing on foot. The army’s 22nd Mechanized Brigade chased after the retreating Russians and “secured positions in the village,” according to CDS.
Meanwhile, other elements of the 22nd Brigade rolled past Martynovka and continued advancing to the north. It’s not clear whether the Ukrainian vehicle the Russians droned on the northern edge of Martynovka on Aug. 17 belonged to the 22nd.
How far the Ukrainians will advance into Kursk depends on a lot of factors: the Ukrainian general staff’s objectives in the oblast, the size of the Ukrainian invasion force and its capacity for holding the terrain it captures, the robustness of Ukrainian supply lines and—of course—whether and when the Russians organize a serious counteroffensive.
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