Things seem to be happening rapidly.
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Isn’t this the US Politics thread?
The Russia/Ukraine war thread is “over there” and it’s been really busy today.
You should check it out.
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Fighting in Kursk region enters third day, Russia says
Heavy fighting in Russia’s Kursk region has entered a third day, with efforts “ongoing” to expel Ukrainian forces from the country, Moscow’s defence ministry has said.
Russia says at least 1,000 Ukrainian forces, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, crossed the border on Tuesday.
Some 3,000 people have had to evacuate the region, as ongoing military altercations have killed at least four people, Kursk’s deputy Governor Andrei Belostotsky said on Thursday.
Ukraine’s military has maintained a resolute silence on the allegations, but a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky has blamed “Russia’s unequivocal aggression” for any “military actions”.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a long-term aide to President Zelensky added: “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes.”
Russia’s defence ministry said advancements and “breakthrough attempts” by the Ukrainian army’s formations in the Sudzhansky and Korenevsky districts in Kursk were thwarted in a combined effort from the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the military.
The Kremlin said Ukraine had lost 660 military personnel since the start of hostilities in Kursk. Mr Belostotsky claimed Kyiv’s forces were beginning to retreat from the region.
The BBC is unable to verify death tolls in active conflicts, and fatalities reported by adversaries are often not a true representation of the situation on the ground.
In its update on Thursday Moscow said Kyiv had lost 82 units of armoured vehicles. A much higher number than its initial report that 11 tanks and more than 20 armoured vehicles had entered Russia near the town of Sudzha on Tuesday morning.
Also on Thursday Russia suggested, for the third consecutive day, to have stopped Ukrainian troops from advancing in Kursk.
But on Wednesday, Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov said the “advance” into the Kursk region had been stopped, with Russian forces “continuing to destroy the adversary in areas directly adjacent to the Russian-Ukrainian border”.
While the FSB made claims to a similar effect on Tuesday, when initial reports of a potential Ukrainian incursion surfaced.
In its latest report, the Institute for the Study of War, a well-respected think tank, said geolocated footage from the past two days showed that Ukrainian armoured vehicles have advanced to positions 10km (6.2 miles) into the Kursk region.
Meanwhile, footage verified by the BBC has shown fighter jets flying low overhead in the region in recent days.
Russia’s military leadership is under severe scrutiny domestically, as some popular and generally well-informed pro-war Telegram channels have said the situation on the ground is not as stable as the Kremlin has suggested.
The influential pro-war Rybar Telegram channel went on to strongly criticise the highest ranks of the Russian military on Wednesday, saying that “for two months the full information was sent to the useless headquarters”, adding that there was enough time “to make an appropriate decision”.
Rybar’s concerns were echoed by several other pro-war bloggers.
Local leaders in regions adjacent to Kursk, both in Russia and in Ukraine, ordered residents to evacuate the area since news of the incursion.
On Wednesday, the head of the Ukrainian region of Sumy, Volodymyr Artyukh, ordered the evacuation of areas bordering Kursk.
While in the Russian region of Belgorod, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday that settlements across his province were attacked by Ukrainian forces over the past 24 hours.
This is not the first incursion into Russia by fighters based in Ukraine. Some groups of anti-Kremlin Russians launched raids last year, which were repelled.
The forces crossed into the Belgorod and Kursk regions again in March, where they engaged in clashes with Russian security forces.
On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko said the Ukrainian army had established control over the Sudzha gas hub, a major gas facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine, which has continued despite the war.
It is the only point of entry for Russian gas into the EU.
But on Thursday gas was reportedly still flowing from Sudzha.
Russia’s National Guard said it had reinforced security around Kursk’s nuclear power station, which lies some 70km north-east of Sudzha.
For the past few months Russia has made incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, as many of Kyiv’s ground forces have faced relentless attacks in the eastern Donbas region.
In a recent interview Ukraine’s head of defence intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said the main offensive by Russian forces “is expected to be over in a month and a half to two months”.
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Good. ■■■■■■■■ bricks - Brigades are coming from everywhere or nowhere
Trent is Telenkoing. I don’t know who Romanov is. But I like the david. D esque amounts of forces
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We are loaded and we know what we are doing is such a kick-ass expression
I don’t think that the prepared defenses were all that impressive and most of the money was pocketed.
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It appears the Yanks still want Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
Battles persist in Russia’s Kursk region; Ukraine said to occupy villages
A surprise Ukrainian attack into western Russia raised questions about whether Kyiv’s forces violated U.S. restrictions on the use of donated fighting vehicles.
KYIV — In what appears to be Ukraine’s largest incursion into Russia more than two years since Russian forces invaded the country, fighting continued for a third day in the Kursk region.
Russian military bloggers claimed Ukrainian forces had occupied several border villages and part of the town of Sudzha.
The blogger reports could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials for days have declined to comment on the unusual operation.
Previous Ukrainian offensives into Russia were led by anti-Putin volunteer militant groups not formally affiliated with Ukraine’s Armed Forces. However, this assault appears to involve regular Ukrainian brigades, according to Russian officials, who claimed that some 1,000 troops with armored vehicles and tanks crossed the border on Tuesday from Ukraine’s Sumy region.
Video posted by a pro-war Russian Telegram channel purported to show U.S.-provided Stryker fighting vehicles near Ukraine’s border with Kursk as part of the incursion. The Washington Post could not independently verify the video.
Though the White House has recently permitted Kyiv to use donated weapons to strike Russian forces at some points across the border, taking U.S.-supplied fighting vehicles into Russia is still prohibited as a condition of Ukraine receiving the weapons. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said Washington is reaching out to the Ukrainian military to learn more about the operation and its objectives.
Ukraine has not yet been criticized by Washington for the cross-border assault, said an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. Ukraine now controls a gas metering station about five miles inside Russia, the adviser said.
Some analysts speculated that Kyiv’s goal could be to turn off all Russian gas deliveries to Europe as a leveraging point. On Thursday, gas was still flowing through Sudzha, the last operational shipping point for a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Europe via Ukraine. Ukraine earns lucrative transit fees but has expressed a desire to cut off Russia’s remaining energy business in Europe.
Russia’s National Guard said it had beefed up security around the Kursk nuclear power station, about 40 miles northeast of the town.
“Ultimately, the decisions about how Ukraine conducts its military operations are decisions that Ukraine makes,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday.
Russia’s most senior military commander, chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov, told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that the Ukrainian offensive had been halted. The Defense Ministry said Thursday that Russia had used half-ton airdropped bombs to attack Ukrainian forces in the Russian region.
But Russian military bloggers painted a drastically different picture, criticizing Russian forces for not better fortifying the border and lamenting the town of Sudzha as lost to the surprise Ukrainian invaders now turning the tables on their occupiers.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, suggested on the country’s national television news broadcast that any military actions on the Russian territory could better Ukraine’s position during future negotiations with Russia to end the war. He did not comment on the Kursk incursion specifically.
Podolyak wrote on the social media platform X on Thursday that Russia “has consistently believed that restrictive legal norms do not apply to it, thus it can attack neighboring countries’ territories with impunity and hypocritically demand … the inviolability of its own territory. War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes.”
Military analysts questioned why Kyiv would choose to open a new area of the front when its forces have been steadily losing ground in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. Russian forces have advanced around the strategic hub of Pokrovsk — a key transit point that connects other cities in the Donetsk region to the large city of Dnipro just two hours west.
While Ukraine might be trying to divert forces from the east to defend its new offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, Russia already has more personnel and maneuverability than Ukraine. Kyiv has been mobilizing thousands of troops in recent months in a ramped-up conscription campaign, but those recruits need to undergo weeks of training before reaching the battlefield.
Ukrainian officials have expressed some sense of urgency to better their military position before the U.S. presidential elections in November. The last tranche of American security assistance was held up for more than six months by Republicans in Congress — a signal that future military aid is not guaranteed, especially if GOP nominee Donald Trump wins office. Trump has said that he would quickly push the two sides to reach a negotiated settlement of the war.
With the situation in the area apparently still volatile, and Kyiv bracing for Russian reprisals, Ukrainian officials ordered the evacuation of about 6,000 people from the Sumy region.
With the situation in the area apparently still volatile, and Kyiv bracing for Russian reprisals, Ukrainian officials ordered the evacuation of about 6,000 people from the Sumy region.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/08/ukraine-kursk-russia-occupied-war/
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You have probably seen my posts about the lack of coordination and trust in the UA units and commanders; well, the actions of the last couple of days are showing that they are overcoming these faults. There is excellent coordination between recce forces, arty, armour and engineers - even aviation.
The next test is the supply system and unit rotations (forward passage of lines, relief in place, etc. )
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Why do they want to take the nuclear power plant?
But do they?
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Bumpski
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