Dmitry Orlov
War correspondent Marat Khairullin reporting from Kursk:
On the 20th day of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ invasion of the Kursk region, our Western enemies seem to have begun to understand what sort of adventure their mercenaries have gotten themselves into. A major victory and a counteroffensive with the goal of forcing Russia to sit down at the negotiating table have turned into a tourniquet around the neck of Führer Zelensky. Even the dimmest bulbs of the Western mainstream (for example, the French) have realized that there is no point in further praising the Ukrainians for the Kursk counteroffensive without seriously discussing the catastrophe that is simultaneously unfolding at Pokrovsk and Toretsk. During the 20 days of the Kursk counteroffensive, Russian troops breached two of the most heavily fortified areas of the Ukrainian front, which the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly declared impregnable. These are the Pokrovsk-Selidovo and Toretsk-New York lines.
Just to give you an idea of it, the depth of the Ukrainian defense near Toretsk is 35 kilometers and includes everything that modern military engineering science has come up with: minefields, multiple layers of barbed wire, concrete bunkers, numerous mineshafts turned into fortresses, water barriers and blocks of multi-story apartment buildings in dozens of settlements. This is a very densely populated area even by European standards. And in these endless fortifications, in this particular direction alone, there were more than 25 thousand highly motivated, Russia-hating Ukies.<
An even more difficult obstacle presented itself near Pokrovsk, with three lines of defense, five satellite cities acting as ready-made fortresses, and a network of artificial reservoirs. In total, there was something like a thousand kilometers of continuous trenches, constructed according to all the rules of modern military art by the engineers of a special NATO contractor unit sent there by the Europeans last year, once it became clear that Avdeyevka would fall sooner or later. And in this nightmarish mess of a million tons of concrete and steel on a small patch less than 40 kilometers wide, was ensconced the best group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, numbering almost 100 thousand people in units mostly made up of veterans.
These Ukrainian veterans regularly pushed their own untrained and frightened freshly drafted Ukrainian soldiers to the front line under Russian bullets and shells, because that’s what the Ukrainians and the Ukraine are like: this was for them just another line of defense — throwing the corpses of their own youth under the tracks of advancing tanks. However, despite all this, the Russian army, like a hot knife through butter, is passing through all these fortifications.
The West, while applauding Zelensky, fail to appreciate the cold, resolute fury which the “Kursk adventure” has generated in the hearts of Russian soldiers. This attack has too many associations and historical parallels. And Russia’s reaction to it will be terrible! If Zelensky was pushed into this operation by the West, then the people who pushed him must understand that this act will remain in the memory of the Russian people forever, like the attacks by Hitler, Napoleon or Khan Batu. The Kursk adventure will always serve to remind the Russian people that the West is dangerous, merciless and fights like a rat when cornered.
There is no escaping the comparisons. If near Toretsk and Pokrovsk professional, well-armed Ukrainian Armed Forces confront the Russian army, then near Kursk the freshest, best-trained, well-armed Ukrainian units numbering at least 15-20 thousand people attacked peaceful cities and towns. Russian border defenses in this place amount to just one line of trenches and anti-tank fortifications called dragon’s teeth. The section of the border in the Kursk region which the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked was about 60 kilometers wide.
Due to the gigantic size of the country, Russia simply does not have the resources to constantly guard its entire border, permanently keeping thousands of soldiers in the trenches. The Russian army guards the border with Ukraine using the so-called defensive screen, in which a small number of military units are stationed a few kilometers back from the border. Their task, in the event of an attack, is to advance towards the enemy and hold it back for as long as possible, or until the main forces arrive.
The section of the border that was attacked was guarded by just three Russian regiments of the second line, a total of about three thousand people. These are reserve regiments, formed mainly from reservists called up in the summer of 2022 and older contract soldiers. Such units serve mainly in areas of secondary importance. To this we can add four border outposts, at which were stationed a total of three hundred conscripts — young lads of 18 who had never so much as smelled gunpowder.
Apparently, it simply could not have occurred to the Russian command and leadership that Zelensky would decide on such an insane course of action — contrary to common sense, laws of war and military science. This shows that the Russian authorities, until the last moment, treated the Zelensky régime as at least somewhat reasonable and subject to human laws, despite all the obvious contradictions. This was another bitter mistake.
The previous such mistake was the Prigozhin mutiny, which happened exactly a year ago. And here we must observe the reaction of the Russian state. The leadership of the rebellious private army was variously destroyed or dispersed and Wagner PMC was erased from the official annals of Russian history. Russia is a great military power with a proud and victorious history and it is difficult to imagine a greater disgrace for a Russian fighting unit than nationwide ostracism and oblivion. We can only guess what Russia will do to the organizers of the attack on its sovereign territory at Kursk.
The Ukrainians were betting it all on an element of surprise. They believed that their fresh forces, which were many times superior to the Russian defenders and armed with the best NATO weapons, would easily break through the defense of three reserve regiments, made up of volunteers in their fifties and called-up reservists armed only with small arms. But from the very first hours they faced severe disappointment.
The first to come under attack from the Ukrainian forces were the border outposts with those very conscripts — eighteen-year-old boys. These two outposts held them back and only after several hours of resistance were the Russian commanders forced to surrender to the superior enemy forces. Russians value the lives of their conscripts. It is believed that a boy becomes a man only after serving in the army. Compare this to the Ukrainian army, where, on the contrary, its most inexperienced get pushed under Russian tanks.
In order to save the lives of these future men, Russian commanders made the decision to surrender. The Ukrainians then shot all the officers who surrendered, along with the conscripts at the first two outposts. At two other outposts, which were attacked a little later, the officers died in the first hours of the battle, and the conscripts, left without orders, made an independent decision to stage a fighting retreat, protecting groups of civilians fleeing from the invasion of the Ukrainian horde along the way.
This is another important point that is not understood in the West. The Ukrainians, like the Nazi invaders in distant 1941, attacked sleeping, peaceful towns and villages of Kursk without any warning. In the zone of the Special Military Operation, the Russians warn civilians in advance, giving them the opportunity to evacuate and at least to gather their documents and valuables. In Kursk, in each populated area the Ukrainians captured without resistance, they set fire to houses in which women and children were sleeping, creating an atmosphere of panic. This was part of the Ukrainian strategy: to make the civilian population suffer as much as possible in order to force Putin to negotiate with Zelensky.
This was a well-thought-out, cynical tactic of a terrorist. When almost twenty thousand terrorists simultaneously attack peaceful cities and villages, thousands of frightened women, children, and old people flee in all directions. Under such conditions, the main task for the small Russian units was not even to resist the Ukrainian military, but to save the old people, the women and the children. The refugees flocked to the military, who literally protected them from the Ukrainian Nazis with their own bodies. Today, when the information blockade imposed by the West and by the Ukraine around the captured territories is falling, more and more irrefutable evidence is emerging that the Ukrainian military deliberately hunted civilians with drones, trying to kill groups of refugees trying to leave.
One of the centers to which people flocked from the captured surrounding villages was the town of Malaya Loknya. The only fortified complex in it was the women’s prison, and it was there that the soldiers of the 9th Motorized Rifle Regiment decided to hold out to the last. They were several dozen reservists and volunteers in their fifties. The prison became a transit point for many refugees. While some soldiers of the 9th Regiment, together with the conscript border guards who had joined them, were leading the refugees out, others were fighting in the surrounding villages and forests to give civilians time to evacuate, leading them to the outskirts of Malaya Loknya and evacuating them to the rear by roundabout routes through forests and swamps.
Despite all this, no one cancelled the main combat mission of the 9th Regiment. A direct road to the city of Kurchatov, where the Kursk Nuclear Power Station is located, runs directly through Malaya Loknya. It was precisely this that the Ukrainian forces were rushing towards: it was the seizure of the nuclear power plant, according to the plan of the insane Führer Zelensky, that was supposed to force Putin’s hand to soften his position and to negotiate. An attempt at direct nuclear blackmail is unprecedented in known history. And a seemingly completely incapable regiment of old men and reservists stood in the way of these plans of the crazy Ukrainian tyrant.
This one episode expresses the essence of Russia as a historical phenomenon. On one side were specially chosen mercenaries from all over the world, the best elite units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the best weapons, complete superiority in firepower; on the other, middle-aged local men who simply stood their ground and did not let this horde through. The 9th regiment, though badly short of men, calmly and without fuss held this route for as long as it took — until the main forces arrived. Only now, three weeks later, the soldiers of the 9th regiment started to be withdrawn from their positions.
The West fatally misunderstands Russia. Western press was missing at a field, shimmering with midday heat, somewhere near the town of Kurchatov near Kursk, where the surviving soldiers of the 9th regiment set up a bivouac in a nearby patch of woods. There were no marching bands and no flowers; all that happened was that a Russian general drove straight across the field, presented the people who saved the whole world from nuclear blackmail with military awards, and drove off. And then the soldiers continued to settle in their new bivouac. The only cause for joy for them was access to a banya (called “sauna” in Finnish). Even the standard ration of 100ml of vodka is not allowed because they are still on duty. Perhaps tomorrow, or in a week, or maybe in two weeks, they will march into battle again. Such is the Russian army. Such are the Russian people.
The West should not be deceived by Vladimir Putin’s apparent calmness. You should take note of the fact that near Kursk a reserve regiment of the second line held out against the elite forces of the Ukraine and the West. Imagine what the most combat-ready units of the Russian army, which are currently busy ripping through NATO-constructed defenses at Pokrovsk and Toretsk, will do to you.
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Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/5e255c0f-0157-448b-b286-c130d3b8a11d?from=email
If this is true the Russian second string are definitely heroes of their people and homeland. Stories like this were commonplace during the great war. And so it is again now. Nationalism, history and tradition do have a place when terror crosses a border. The West better learn the lessons soon as the bringers of terror are within the walls of every city and state, just awaiting the word.
It was a stupid play alright, fatal me thinks for Zelensky.