2024-08-14 14:23:36
Ukrainian soldiers are still operating deep into Russian territory in the Kursk region. Although Moscow claims to have stopped their advance, it has not yet provided any evidence.
Footage shows a destroyed Russian convoy near the Russian village of Oktyabrskoye, 35 kilometers from the border | Video: Reuters
Using satellite imagery and geolocation, the respected US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Monday that reality did not match reports by the Russian Ministry of Defense about the halt in the Ukrainian advance and alleged retaliatory counterstrikes against Ukrainian convoys.
The extent of the territory controlled by the Ukrainians was over a thousand square kilometers on Monday. “The Russians had some forces here, but they were poorly trained and armed basic service soldiers. At a certain level, Russian military intelligence failed to evaluate the information, Ukraine managed to keep the plans secret. But gradually, the Russian command will certainly withdraw better units to these places. Most likely, among them there will also be some of those that are in the occupied territory of Ukraine, for example in the Kharkiv region,” said military analyst Michal Smetana from the Prague Institute of International Studies in the program Aktuálně.cz Spotlight News.
The Russian Kursk Oblast is adjacent to Ukraine (marked in orange on the map). The Ukrainians came close to the nuclear power plant. | Photo: Aktuálně.cz
The expert does not expect that the Ukrainian army would try to significantly increase the occupied territory and would like, for example, to reach Kursk, which has a population of almost half a million people. “Maintaining such positions would be very logistically demanding,” Smetana added.
The Ukrainian server Insider analyzed two videos published by the Russian Ministry of Defense as evidence of alleged “hard retaliatory strikes”. According to analysts, one was filmed in the Donetsk region, and the other was already published by the Russian state news agency TASS last July.
“The Ukrainian offensive surprised not only Vladimir Putin and the army, but also the media and authors of propaganda,” wrote Russian opposition politician and critic of the Kremlin regime Igor Yakovenko.
One hundred and thirty thousand evacuated Russians
On the other hand, on Monday, footage of a Ukrainian military convoy in the village of Giri, located more than twenty kilometers from the city of Suja, which is in Ukrainian hands, appeared on Russian accounts on the Telegram social network. The number of people evacuated since the start of the Ukrainian offensive a week ago has already exceeded 130,000.
The Russian Rybar Telegram channel, which supports Russian aggression and Putin but usually provides reliable information on the situation on the front, described the equipment seen in the village of Giri as Ukrainian, but possibly captured by the Russians. “So far, the Russian armed forces have not succeeded in stabilizing the front line. Enemy armored vehicles are penetrating villages along the entire line of contact,” says the Rybar account, which is managed by a group of people with connections to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Another Russian Telegram account of the VČK-OGPU, which has over a million followers, writes with reference to its source on the ground about the collapse of all administration and infrastructure in the occupied Kursk region: “There are no policemen, firemen, doctors or representatives of the local administration.”
Kyiv has not disclosed how many soldiers it has deployed to the operation in the Kursk region so far. There is speculation about four brigades and ten thousand soldiers. “This number seems to me to correspond to what we see. Terms like battalion, brigade or division are not very accurate in the war in Ukraine, because Ukrainians usually deploy, for example, parts of different brigades,” said analyst Michal Smetana.
Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander Oleksandr Syrskyi first commented on the offensive on Sunday. He published a photo of himself next to the battle map on social networks and briefly wrote: “We continue the operation.” On Monday, he announced the control of more than a thousand square kilometers of Russian territory.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also announced that it has not yet recorded the movement of Belarusian troops to the Ukrainian border. On Saturday, the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko threatened Ukraine with this, who also claimed that the Belarusian air defense shot down several Ukrainian drones. Kyiv called it a fabrication.
Video: Michal Smetana analyzes the Ukrainian invasion of Russia in the program Spotlight News (August 12, 2024)
Michal Smetana – Spotlight News Aktuálně.cz. | Video: Blahoslav Baťa