It Seems the Ukrainians Have Defeated A Russian Incursion in Kursk
The village of Pogrebki may have returned to Ukrainian control
On Aug. 6, a powerful Ukrainian force eventually numbering 20,000 troops invaded Kursk Oblast in western Russia, swiftly capturing a 400-square-mile salient anchored by the town of Sudzha.
Russian counterattacks squeezed the salient down to 250 square miles ahead of the main Russian effort to eject the Ukrainians from Kursk before Russian president Vladimir Putin’s early February deadline, which falls just two weeks after the inauguration of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and the commencement of a chaotic new era for the United States and its allies.
The first phase of that two-phase Russian counteroffensive in Kursk kicked off on Nov. 7. The second launched on Dec. 7.
After more than a month of assaults by a combined Russian-North Korean force numbering no fewer than 60,000 troops, it’s still too soon to declare victory for the Ukrainians. At the same time, however, prospects for Russian victory are dimming.
Consider: in early November, the Russian navy’s 810th Naval Infantry Brigade attacked Ukrainian positions in Pogrebki, a village on the northern edge of the Kursk salient. Riding in factory-fresh BTR-82 wheeled fighting vehicles, the Russians managed to infiltrate and contest Pogrebki.
But the Ukrainian air assault forces’ 95th Air Assault Brigade never gave up the village. And a month later, the battle for Pogrebki appears to be winding down.
Recent Russian drone strikes on the 95th Air Assault Brigade seem to indicate the line of contact has shifted north. “It looks like last month’s two-battalion-sized assault breakthrough went nowhere and was eliminated,” noted Moklasen, an open-source intelligence analyst who has closely followed the battle.
A quartet of Russian brigades and regiments are still attacking along a road leading through the hamlet of Zelenyi Shylakh on the western edge of the salient. But those attacks have all failed, as well: around 90 destroyed Russian vehicles litter a four-square-mile patch of Kursk around that single road. Ukrainian losses are much lighter: just a dozen or so vehicles.
The Russians’ disposition around the Kursk salient is so fragile that the outnumbered Ukrainians have managed to mount some local counterattacks. Beat in Pogrebki and getting beat around Zelenyi Shylakh, where can Russian commanders realistically expect to achieve a lasting breakthrough in Kursk?
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