Russian Warplanes Are Clearing the Way for Russian Assault Troops in Kursk Oblast
Bomb from the air then advance on the ground. It’s a time-honored tactic.
Aiming to clear the way for the vehicles and infantry leading Russia’s costly counteroffensive in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, the Russian air force struck Ukrainian positions in Kursk at least 14 times on Monday, according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies.
Bomb from the air then advance on the ground. It’s a time-honored tactic that both sides in Russia’s 33-month wider war on Ukraine deploy.
Late last month, a Russian air force fighter dropped at least one 550-pound bomb on Ukrainian troops in the village of Martynovka on the eastern edge of the 250-square-mile salient the Ukrianians carved out of Kurk in early August. Over subsequent days, Russian drones added to the aerial destruction in Martynovka.
By last week, Ukrainian troops in Martynovka—possibly from the 80th Air Assault Brigade—were in retreat. Russian infantry managed to advance toward the village on Monday. It’s the inverse of what happened in late August, shortly after a dozen Ukrainian battalions breached Russian border defenses in Kursk and rapidly advanced into the oblast.
Around Aug. 29, a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter from the Ukrainian air force’s 39th Tactical Aviation Brigade, based in Zhytomyr Oblast in northern Ukraine, lobbed at least two American-made GBU-62 Joint Direct Attack Munitions at a purported concentration of Russian troops—possibly from the 177th Marine Regiment Battalion or the 15th "Pyatnashka" Brigade—in Cherkasskaya Konopelka, a hamlet six miles south of Makhnovka.
The winged glide bombs, ranging as far as 40 miles under GPS guidance, struck two ends of some kind of industrial complex, demolishing it. Shortly after the bombing run, Ukrainian troops led by the army’s 61st Mechanized Brigade consolidated their gains just west of Cherkasskaya Konopelka.
Three months later, the Russians are the ones doing the bombing—and the advancing.
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