Ukraine's Army Attacks Into Russia – Situation Report

The Best Analysis of the Fighting on the Ground

By Simplicius

Let’s get right into the Kursk offensive, which has heated up and remains tense. There’s a lot of information to cover so I’ll eschew any flowery extravagances and contextualizations, getting right down to details instead.

Firstly, what’s been made clear is this is a serious offensive, rather than “TikTok border raid” like the ones of May and June last year, in Belgorod region. Not only are Ukrainian units utilizing fairly strict Opsec protocols, but it’s clear an entire preformed multi-brigade operational taskforce has been assembled, consisting of several elite units, some of which took part in the 2023 Zaporozhye offensive.

Some have posted this list, though take it with a grain of salt because there is virtually no proof at all of most of these brigades’ involvement just yet:

List of formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including the Territorial Defense and State Border Guard Service, involved in the Kursk region.

▫️ 3rd Combat Brigade (of the State Border Guard Service)
▫️ 5th Separate Assault Brigade
▫️ 22nd Mechanized Brigade
▫️ 24th Separate Assault Battalion
▫️ 61st Mechanized Brigade
▫️ 80th Separate Air Assault Brigade
▫️ 82nd Separate Air Assault Brigade
▫️ 103rd Separate Brigade (of the Territorial Defense)
▫️ 150th Separate Mechanized Brigade
▫️ 151st Separate Battalion (of the Territorial Defense)

The 22nd was blooded in the Bakhmut battle, while the 82nd is a famous elite brigade that was given the German Marders, American Strykers, and British Challengers for the Zaporozhye offensive. And we have now seen many Strykers and some Marders in Kursk—which, by the way, has garnered controversy given that German “tanks” are now officially back on old Russian territory—and Kursk of all places!—for the first time since WWII:

If Ukraine uses German-made tanks during its invasion of the Kursk region, this will not cause outrage in Berlin , said the head of the German Bundestag's Defense Committee, Markus Faber.

Getting back:

The earlier listed brigades are not, as of this time, fully staffed but rather a mishmash of various battalions, detachments, elements, etc., of these brigades. Thus, there’s not actually tens of thousands of troops, as that would suggest, but perhaps 2000 at most for now, according to Russian MOD.

The two most important questions then are: how did Ukraine get so many fresh men, and how did they breach the border so badly? Let’s examine:

Firstly, Russia has apparently been planning its own Sumy incursion for a long time. As such, it’s said that they were in the process of having cleared most of the mines in the region, in order to facilitate their own future advances. This is the first big difference with the Zaporozhye offensive of 2023, which was stopped in large part, as you may recall, by Russia’s vast mine system.

The Ukrainian penetration in Kharkov had no minefields to go through, although later on Russian correspondents noted the presence of the ISDM Zemledeliye “Agriculture” remote-mining system, which scatters mines to Ukraine’s rear by firing them MLRS-style.

Russia reportedly has large reserves in the area, but they were no where near the border so as not to have their concentrations targeted by potential long-range strikes like HIMARS/ATACMS, etc. Thus, the initial Ukrainian penetration was apparently met only with border guards, some combination of Rosgvardia, FSB guards, and potentially conscripts. This was how Ukraine initially made a large capture of dozens of hapless border guards directly at the first border checkpoint, which has been geolocated to here:

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