FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
At the military level, the Ukrainian army is trying to divert attention from its difficult situation in Donbas.
The Ukrainian army has been retreating for months, being forced to give up kilometer by kilometer of its territory. That makes the images from the Russian border region of Kursk, which have been circulating online and on Telegram since Tuesday morning, all the more surprising.
Drone footage shows Russian soldiers raising their hands in surrender. Another clip shows burning Russian tanks that were just about to leave the transport trailer. Videos from the town of Sudzha, about ten kilometers deep in Russia's interior, show destroyed, burning houses and streets littered with rubble and debris.
These images prove that the Ukrainian army apparently succeeded in launching a surprise attack on Russian territory. Russia, on the other hand, initially tried to downplay the situation. The governor of Russia's Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, initially confirmed the fighting but described the situation on the border as "difficult but controllable". The Russian Defense Ministry later spoke of a Ukrainian "sabotage and reconnaissance unit" that had been "pushed behind the border" after the fighting. But they later revised their official statement and deleted the passage about the supposedly successful defense against Ukrainian intruders.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin finally intervened and spoke of a "large-scale and targeted provocation" in the border region during a Security Council meeting in Moscow. The first time on Russian soil
Pro-Ukrainian units, such as the DRC volunteer troops led by Russian neo-Nazis, have attacked and temporarily occupied Russian territory from Ukraine on several occasions in the past. Most recently, DRC fighters occupied the border village of Kossino in the Belgorod region for several days last March.
But the main purpose of these actions was to expose the Russian dictator Putin and his army. After a few days, the fighters retreated again. The Ukrainian army did not directly participate in these attacks. She simply supported them with artillery fire and supplied them with weapons and ammunition. This time is different.
" For the first time, regular Ukrainian troops are fighting on Russian soil, " says Russian military expert and regime critic Jan Matveyev. At least 1,000 soldiers and heavy equipment such as armored personnel carriers are involved in this attack on the Ukrainian side.
It remains unclear how far their progress has gone. At least five border villages are believed to have been captured. Several videos from the Russian side also show attacks on Ukrainian armored vehicles at least seven kilometers deep into Russian territory.
The depth of the advance, but also the capture of at least two Russian recruits, shows that the Russian army probably did not expect an attack on this part of the border.
The administration of Kursk also did not warn the residents of the border villages. Many of them are now stuck there. On Telegram and the Russian VK network, users report that they currently have no contact with relatives living in villages supposedly occupied by Ukrainian units.
In addition, at least 28 people were injured during the fighting in Kursk on Tuesday, according to official information from the Russian administration in Kursk. A doctor and an ambulance driver were reportedly killed by a drone strike.
By diverting attention from losses in Donbas
The objective of the Ukrainian army with this attack remains unclear at the moment. For Russia, the border region of Kursk is of great importance. The Kursk nuclear power plant and the Kursk 2 power plant, which is currently under construction, are located about 70 kilometers from the border. The filling point of the last operational gas pipeline from Russia to Europe is also located in the border town of Sudzha. If it fell into the hands of the Ukrainian military, Russia would probably no longer be able to transport gas to its remaining EU customers. This means that the Russian military must urgently move reserves into the region to prevent this from happening.
The attack near Kursk shows a failure of Russian reconnaissance
At the military level, the Ukrainian army is trying to divert attention from its difficult situation in Donbas, says Markus Reisner, military expert and colonel in the Austrian Armed Forces.
" This is understandable, but it does not solve the problems in Toretsk, Pokrovsk and New York ," says Reisner. Russian units have captured other areas in the last 24 hours.
However, the attack near Kursk will keep the Russian military busy, at least in the short term, and demonstrate once again the failure of Russian intelligence.
The Ukrainian army overstretched!
Other Western and Ukrainian analysts are also skeptical. Military expert Robert Lee, a fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy Research in Philadelphia, USA, said that one of Ukraine's main problems at the moment is the lack of personnel in the brigades that have been fighting on the front line for months and years. Ukraine has only limited resources to bolster the current offensive. However, without reinforcements, the action is extremely dangerous.
" It is unlikely that this operation will have any significant effect on the course of the war ," Lee wrote in X after the attack.
Regardless of the outcome of the fighting near Kursk, the attack seems to have had at least a sobering effect on the Russian side./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "WorldCrunch"
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