1:After nearly two weeks of Ukrainian military operations inside Russian territory, Kremlin reports and Ukrainian analyzes confirm that Russia is still struggling to mount a coherent defense of the Kursk region against Kiev forces that still clearly hold the initiative . Russian defenses appear concentrated on roads the Ukrainians are most likely to use. Units not normally thrown into the front line, including the infantry of the “Spetsnaz” special forces or the Akhmat paramilitary police, were initially deployed in an attempt to stop the maneuvers of the Ukrainian units.
Moscow ordered lightly equipped volunteer and paramilitary infantry units (usually used for patrols or rear security) in Donetsk to move (to deal with Ukrainian armored units) to Kursk, and to no avail.
According to the signatory’s classified information, the availability of regular Russian troops equipped with heavy weapons, including artillery and tanks, is limited. Reports have confirmed the presence of elements of the 810th Marine Brigade and the 272nd Motorized Rifle Regiment. Both of these units have suffered repeated heavy casualties over the past two and a half years and are largely made up of poorly trained replacements. Meanwhile, the UK is seeking approval from Western allies to allow Ukraine to use “storm shadows” (long-range missile systems) against the Russians.
2:The Russian defensive barriers/minefields and defensive tactics that stopped Kiev’s forces last year in Donetsk and South Zaporizhia have not done much this time. In the Kursk region in August 2024, the Russians looked relatively weak. Ukrainian ground and air reconnaissance when the main attack began, with engineer units, using purely Western demining equipment, had already cleared the paths for the fast-moving Ukrainian attack forces. Reports from the field have credited careful Ukrainian drone reconnaissance, combined with thorough engineer obstacle clearance training exercises, for this success.
3:As of early 2024, Kiev’s primary defensive weapon has been the FPV drone, thanks (in large part) to the near-total cessation of Western artillery munitions deliveries to Ukraine. The Kursk offensive saw the first use by the Ukrainian military of large-scale swarms of drones in the offensive (another factor Russian generals had not planned for).
In 2024, Ukraine’s anti-drone electronic warfare targets Russian reconnaissance drones (particularly the Orlan-10, Super-Cam, and Zala UAVs) as top-priority targets for jamming and destruction. Often, cheap Ukrainian drones carrying explosives crash multi-million dollar Russian spy drones.
Without the eyes of their drones, Russian gunners and pilots cannot find targets to shoot at, which a Ukrainian artillery officer deployed to Kursk told the signatory yesterday that they have rendered much of the Russian artillery almost completely ineffective.
4:How to explain Russia’s inadequate response. From Ukraine’s perspective, the level of Russian resistance to the nearly first foreign invasion in 80 years was weak and difficult to understand. Operation Kursk, by all accounts (except official Russian networks who deny it) has seen the Ukrainian military capture more Russian prisoners of war than any other two-week combat period since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The exact number of Russian soldiers who surrendered to Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region is not yet clear. Most analysts put them above 1,000. Ukrainian media have contrasted the apparently rapid collapse of Russian troops’ morale with the fighters’ bitter defense of the city of Mariupol or the cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, where Ukrainian units fought for months under heavy Russian bombardment and with heavy casualties. An extensive report by Ukrainian TV station TSN from the city of Shuja highlighted a stark contrast between the passive Russian public response to foreign troops in their city, and that in Ukrainian cities such as Kherson or Melitopol (where hundreds of unarmed residents demonstrated in front of Russians in 2022).
Russia was also invaded by the Chinese in 1969
5:Kursk 2024 is not the first post-WWII invasion by a conventional military since the Nazis in WWII, as the major news outlets claim. They ignore the battles between the then Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over control of Damanski Island, a small islet in the Ussuri River, a waterway that separates the two countries in the Manchuria region. On March 2, 1969, DPRK forces used small boats to cross Ussuri to attack and ambush Soviet border troops stationed on the island.
Both countries have claimed ownership of the 0.74 square kilometer (0.3 sq mi) wetland, called Zhenbao (Rare Treasure) Island by Beijing. Over the next two weeks then, the standoff escalated the fighting and both sides sent in heavy reinforcements, with the Red Army (Soviet Union) eventually prevailing against the People’s Liberation Army of China.
At the time, the media, controlled by the Kremlin, reported that the Soviet Union would always protect its territory, by force if necessary. Moscow maintained physical control of Damanski/Zhenbao until 1991, when Moscow formally handed the island over to the People’s Republic of China as part of the Sino-Soviet Border Agreement.
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