The diversion is more significant than the article makes it out to be.
On face value, Kursk region isn’t that important to Moscow and they’ve got the strategic points like the nuclear plant on lock. However it’s hard to deny the value of the morale boost that Ukraine desperately needed, even as it has risks as with anything.
The choice for Ukraine is to keep on the defensive, slowly losing its ground, or the same thing happens but Putin is humiliated on the world stage by Ukraine, taking Russian military high command by surprise whether it forces their hand or not.
The Kursk incursion does not change losses caused by poor military coordination present from Ukrainian and Russian command structures.
There is zero chance of this incursion making it anywhere close to the nuclear plant. In fact, at this point even pro Ukrainian maps are showing that it’s Russia that’s on the offensive in Kursk. I also have no idea what morale boost you’re talking about as this stunt pulled valuable troops and machinery from the collapsing front in Donbas. Here’s what CNN reported just a couple of days ago www.cnn.com/2024/09/08/europe/…/index.html
Two and half years of Russia’s grinding offensive have decimated many Ukrainian units. Reinforcements are few and far between, leaving some soldiers exhausted and demoralized. The situation is particularly dire among infantry units near Pokrovsk and elsewhere on the eastern front line, where Ukraine is struggling to stop Russia’s creeping advances.
As a battalion commander, Dima was in charge of around 800 men who fought in some of the fiercest, bloodiest battles of the war – most recently near Pokrovsk, the strategic eastern town that is now on the brink of falling to Russia.
But with most of his troops now dead or severely injured, Dima decided he’d had enough. He quit and took another job with the military – in an office in Kyiv.
Yury, a soldier attached to the 59th brigade based near Ukrainsk, says Ukrainian losses have been significant. A reinforcement of inexperienced infantrymen sent from Ukraine’s 71st brigade were wiped out. “Over three days, 100 became zero. Some ran, some fell.”
The Russians are still focused on control of the roads leading to Pokrovsk. “We have been fighting with our last guard, and have thrown our logistics guys into the trenches.”
“Physicist”, a tank commander with the 68th, says the Russian air force and artillery can react almost in real time; anything that moves and is not protected is destroyed. His tank drivers consequently now mostly work as static artillery units, operating from closed positions, and much farther back.
This has been a gift for Russia because now Ukrainian troops are out in the open where Ukraine is taking much heavier losses than they did while they were dug in. forbes.com/…/out-in-the-open-and-on-the-move-in-r…
This also extended the front for Ukraine complicating their logistics situation. The worst part from Ukrainian perspective is that they can’t pull troops back because it will be admitting the failure of the gambit. So, now they’re stuck feeding men and machines into a battle that has zero long term value while they lose important strategic areas around Pokrovsk.
What’s likely to happen in the near future is that Ukraine will lose Pokrovsk which is a key logistics hub through which southern forces are supplied by rail. Once that’s lost there’s no good way to move supplies or reinforcements south meaning that the group of forces there will be completely cut off. Kursk greatly accelerated this process.
The Pokrovsk direction is a real threat for Ukraine, agreed, and also is a gambit wirh inherent risk, agreed. In your view, how much more likely would Ukraine be to fend off the Russian assault on that front had they not?
The direction of travel would’ve been the same, but Ukraine might’ve been able to hold the line for a few extra months. The key part here is that Kursk stunt has no upside to it, and it made an already catastrophic situation worse.
That said, the problem Ukraine had from the start was that it was entirely dependent on the west because it’s not able to produce its own weapons. As a result, Ukraine has to fight a war for western media which puts huge constraints on their strategy. For example, Ukraine always holds territory to the last man instead of withdrawing from untenable positions as they did with Bakhmut. I think that Kursk is another example of this phenomenon. Ukraine needed to demonstrate that they still have a capacity to fight, and hence they came up with a narrative that they’re able to bring the fight to Russia.
Conversely, Russian army has far more operational freedom because they’re not fighting for the media. They’re able to make strategic retreats as they did in 2022, and they can absorb incursions like Kursk without diverting troops from strategic areas. Because Russia is self sufficient in military terms, they can ignore whatever narratives are being spun at the time and focus on achieving their long term goals.
The diversion is more significant than the article makes it out to be.
What diversion? Russia hasn’t had to slow down it’s advances in other regions at all, in fact in some cases Russia has made faster gains, because Ukraine diverted its own best troops…
On face value, Kursk region isn’t that important to Moscow and they’ve got the strategic points like the nuclear plant on lock. However it’s hard to deny the value of the morale boost that Ukraine desperately needed,
It’s only a morale boost to westerners observing the news as if it’s a game. It doesn’t help the real world situation for Ukraine or Ukrainians. That’s what this was for, to signal boost to the west.
The Kursk incursion does not change losses caused by poor military coordination present from Ukrainian and Russian command structures.
No, it’s an example of said poor military coordination present in the Ukrainian command structure…
From my understanding the losses occurred mainly from miscommunications between one group sent in to relieve another, or drone and air units with jammer units and that kind of thing. Macroscopic strategy decisions such as the Kursk incursion are not related to that. Clearly it was planned well as intelligence kept it under wraps until its execution. The execution of the defense was poorer on the eastern front such as intergroup communication problems, inadequately prepared defense lines and so on.
I mean its gruesome but thats how a war of atrition works and how you win it, who controls one square kilometer more or less is quite irrelevant as that can change fast once one side collapses.
Agreed. It makes sense that if you live in the West that you are going to get Western propaganda. What was a bit more surprising was the wall-to-wall level of psy-op grade propaganda coming from the Americans and of some of the other countries, like the Germans.
The reductionist mindset of a multi-layered, regional geopolitical situation was reduced to we, the Americans.NATO = the white-wearing good guys, Russians = bad guys.
I mean, it is not like this has not been done before and from all sides. Yet the level in which any valid criticism of what is essentially an exercise in NATO expansionism, and the repercussions of that push, which ends with the Ukrainians being used a cannon fodder as a way to weaken the Russian military is a prime example of a Machiavellian strategy, in my opinion.
Ukraine will be the one to pay the highest price, just like the Cubans have, in the inverse case, since the Cuban missile crisis. I was looking at a demographic chart of Ukraine and their population has taken a huge blow, either due to deaths or people fleeing the country. Now, who do you think is going to the all the contracts to rebuild everything back up, later on?
Ships visited Cuba included frigate Admiral Gorshkov and nuclear submarine Kazan, both from Nothern Fleet, and those in this article are unspecified but most likely from the Pacific Fleet.
Sorry but based on the Nippon Steel controversy we cannot trust Japan with a steel company so therefore we cannot trust them with advanced missile tech.
Big shock. Israel is a terrorist state. It should never have existed in the first place, and it doesn’t deserve to exist now. They are an occupying force, an invading army. They’re murdering innocent people because their imaginary friend told them they could. Absolute dog sht nation with an absolute dog sht leader.
Note: This article is written as if Hamas actually wrote documents which exactly match Netanyahu’s desired narrative and the IDF “accidentally leaked them”.
One could pose questions on whether it was actually Hamas who forged documents published by the IDF.
The most annoying thing is that the peace accords back then where known to be derailed by the USA and UK, like it was 100% not a secret, absolutely public knowledge if you actually cared about the actual geopolitical region and were paying attention to what was going on outside general news media. Academics were saying the same as well.
The Western media utterly, and seemingly in conjunction decided to under report this to well, mostly to Americans. So your average Americans were kept in the dark of how instrumental they were in escalating this war. And painted anyone who stated actual reality as merely Putin puppets. The manipulation was strong since it seems to have worked wonders.
I fail to see how the USA and by extension the UK are any different when playing the disinformation and misinformation game. Everyone blames everyone else and claims they do not do any of it.
Nuland is just a war criminal but one that has the approval of the American military and political complex. I trust people have listensed to the leaked phone call from years ago where she cherry picks Ukrainian politicians to exalt into office? Go democracy.
worldnews
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.