"Ukrainian invasion of Russian border territories: Day four"
by Gilbert Doctorow, gilbertdoctorow.com (August 11, 2024)
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/08/11/ukrainian-invasion-of-russian-border-territories-day-four/

I salute Iran’s Press TV for offering their global audience last night two very different appreciations of Ukraine’s ongoing attack on the Russian border oblast (province) of Kursk, my own and that of fellow panelist George Szamuely. To be sure, we were both operating under conditions of the ‘fog of war’ when there is conflicting and only partial information coming out of the two sides to the conflict for us to go on.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/130418

For its part, Russian state television has not in any way helped outside observers to understand the real situation on the ground. Watching the Russian news wrap-up after the taping of our Press TV program, I saw only extensive coverage of the evacuees from the war zone, of what they experienced as the Ukrainian marauders passed through their villages and the damage that they caused. We were shown the trains and buses carrying these Russians away to temporary shelters in the region or further away in the Russian heartland. We were shown the relief efforts by volunteers across Russia who collected and shipped to Kursk urgently needed supplies of food, clothing and the like to help those who left everything behind to escape with greatest speed from the looming danger to their communities. As for numbers of evacuees, I heard only something on the order of 4,000.

This morning’s video news report by the Indian broadcaster WION speaks of 70,000 Russian evacuees, which I think is likely close to reality. Note that by curious coincidence, this number is roughly the same as the number of Israelis who have been evacuated from the north of their country to find safety from the Hezbollah attacks coming across the Lebanese border. That is a very substantial number of people. But I imagine that the explanation of the evacuation in Russia is rather different from that in Israel, where the evacuees fully expect to return home after a cease fire is declared. In the Russian case, I think the reason is to prepare the way for massive destruction of these settlements by the Russian air force to eradicate in one blow all Ukrainian forces who otherwise would be creating fortifications out of the houses and digging in for a long defense that otherwise would be countered only by house to house fighting which would be very costly in terms of killed and maimed Russian soldiers. Instead, 3 ton glider bombs can erase whole areas from the face of the earth at no cost to the Russian military. To put it in the context of Russian history going back to 1812 and the fight against Napoleon, we will witness Russian application of the ‘scorched earth’ doctrine. Whether I am right or not will be evident in the coming day or two.

In light of the above, and in light of still unquantified Ukrainian attacks across the border from the RF oblasts of Bryansk to the north of Kursk and of Belgorod to the south of Kursk, I am obliged to change my evaluation of the objectives which the Ukrainian side has been pursuing from the start of its incursion into Kursk. To be sure, as I was saying two days ago in an interview with ‘Judging Freedom’, and as Mr. Szamuely says here, this incursion or invasion had a Public Relations dimension: to demonstrate both to the United States and to the Ukrainian citizenry that there is still fight in the Ukrainian armed forces notwithstanding the very bad news coming every day from the line of confrontation one hundred kilometers or more to the west and south of the present-day fighting at the internationally recognized border separating the two states.

However, given the follow-on move of Ukrainian regular army units into the fight at the border, we can also see the hope by Kiev to not only take but to hold territory which could later be used as a bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Moscow over the terms of a cease-fire and even terms of a peace treaty. The winning prize would be for the Ukrainians to capture the nuclear power station further inland, perhaps 50 km away, which could be used in negotiations as an asset to exchange for the Russian-held Ukrainian nuclear station in Zaporozhie, once Ukraine’s single biggest source of electricity.

When judged against these possible strategic considerations of Kiev, the present mission may look more like a last, desperate throw of the dice to steal victory from the jaws of defeat on the ground of Donetsk and Lugansk, where the essential fighting has been going on till now. Whether or not the Russians actually raze to the ground the settlements on the 15 km or so of border territory that the Ukrainians have seized from Day One, they are busy destroying the human and material resources of the Ukrainian armed forces just to the west of the border, inside Ukraine, where the essential military hardware and personnel have been marshaled to support the incursion into Kursk. As these assets are progressively decimated, there is no chance for the remaining Ukrainian invaders inside Russia to stay alive. They will be slaughtered or surrender.

So what will the dry residue of the Ukrainian rampage in Kursk and the other frontier areas be? It will be the loss of the best trained and equipped Ukrainian brigades that had been given detailed instructions for the campaign by the Americans and other NATO instructors and military advisers ahead of the incursion. Washington’s denials of involvement are absolute lies as judged by Moscow. This can only hasten the eventual capitulation of the Ukrainian army and acceptance of a cease-fire/peace treaty on Russia’s terms.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Transcription below by a reader

PressTV: 0:00 Gilbert Doctorow is an independent international affairs analyst who joins us from Brussels. We also have George Szamuely, research fellow at the Global Policy Institute at the London Metropolitan University, who joins us from Budapest. Welcome to you both.

Gilbert Doctorow, I’ll start with you. This was painted in a way where the Russian army was caught by surprise and that even the US is not aware and that Ukraine is being silent about it. What is your view of the circumstances behind this operation that took place?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 0:34
Well, let’s keep in mind that the Russian-Ukrainian border is roughly the same length as the line of confrontation to the west between the Russian army and the Ukrainian army, mostly in the Donbass. My point is that there’s a lot of territory to watch. We’re talking about 1,000 kilometers or more if you start in the south, in the Belgorod oblast or province, and move to Kursk, which is the next to the north, and which is where the attack has been going on, and still further north, in Bryansk, close to the Belarus border; you have a lot of territory to watch.

So, if the Russians could have missed preparations for this attack, it’s not surprising. Their attention was focused on their fighting in the front lines well to the west, probably 150 kilometers to the west of where this present incursion by Ukraine took place.

What was the purpose of the incursion? Initially, it looked like it was a public-relations effort to demonstrate to the west, and to their own people, that they still have fight in them and that they can execute a very complicated and very sophisticated attack on Russian Federation territory. That they succeeded in doing, but attacking in a raid and holding are two different things.

2:06
And here’s where the real test comes for their planning and for their intentions. At the border, there was nothing of military nature on the Russian side for the Ukrainians to attack. And it’s understandable; the Russians would not have had military hardware or armament stockpiles or command centers within artillery range of Ukraine.

So they were farther back, 60 or 70 kilometers back. And the question is, from the beginning, did the Ukrainians have the force to get 50 or 60 kilometers into Russia? Apparently, they didn’t, as to the best of my knowledge, most of their forces, which were initially said to be about 1,000 troops, were stopped within 15 kilometers of the border on the Russian side. That is far short of posing any strategic threat to Russia.

3:05
At the same time, this was intended to be a breach of the Russian line of defense, through which a large contingent of Ukrainians might pass. And there you have the problem facing the Ukrainians when they planned and began execution of this maneuver. Once you have concentrations of troops and of equipment, that is known and visible from reconnaissance. The Russians have every means of smashing it to bits.

And the Russians have been very harsh and very severe in their response. For the first time in this war, they have openly used fragmentation bombs, cluster bombs, with devastating effect on these concentrations of regular Ukrainian army that were to follow the breach and enter in force into Kursk province. That is the problem they faced as a military task, and it looks like it is an insuperable challenge.

4:08
Out of the thousand who came into the Kursk region, across the frontier, at the beginning of this operation, approximately 300 were killed in the first day. Another three or four hundred were killed in the second day, and the latest report that I have is that more than 1,000, 1,100 Ukrainians had been killed by the Russian forces.

That would indicate that most of the original, very advanced and highly-equipped Ukrainian elite forces were killed, and there has been a subsequent slaughter of regular Ukrainian forces who attempted to enter the breach. That is where we are today, although I have to admit that we are in the fog of war, and nobody can say with certainty the state of the present confrontation in Kursk Oblast.

PressTV: 5:06
All right. So, George Szamuely, the Ukrainians have made this operation and have executed it, which is described as a large operation. Our guest there indicated, I think, the actual number I’m looking at here. Well, actual. Let’s say over 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died as a result, many to have been injured. The former defense minister of Ukraine has said, “Our aim is not to hold on to the Russian territory, but it’s for Russia to stop.” But at the same time, it also means that there are Russian forces that are going to be now concentrated in this area. What is your view about the circumstances surrounding this?

George Szamuely: 5:41
Well, I do think that this was a major public-relations victory for Ukraine, there’s no question about it. This was a major military operation. It involved a very substantial use of its soldiers, its armored forces, its heavy weapons, and it was a colossal intelligence failure. I mean, it’s not a question of how large a border we’re talking about. We’re talking about very a substantial military operation that required months to prepare.

6:19
So you would hope that Russians have some kind of intelligence that they can rely on and would have anticipated this attack. It obviously caught them completely by surprise. And, so far, they’ve already, you know– it’s not just that Russians have been seized, arrested, and are now prisons of war, but the convoys of Russian conscripts have been sent to Kursk to fight off this incursion. They’ve been hit, so there have been some severe casualties here.

7:04
Now, this is, I think, public relations, because I think it’s a way of boosting morale in Ukraine. I mean, the Ukrainians have been suffering setback after setback in the Donbass in recent months. And above all, it’s a signal from Ukraine to its Western patrons, particularly in the United States that, “See, you know, we can achieve major military breakthroughs. We can humiliate the Russians. So keep sending the money, keep sending the arms, you know, keep sending this deadly weaponry, because look what we can do to the Russians.”

7:47
And as far as Ukraine is concerned, really, this is their first big coup against the Russians since September 2022, and they’re obviously quite pleased about this. And I think that’s largely what’s going on here. It’s very hard to see how they can hold onto the territory in Kursk for any length of time. But I think it’s quite likely that they will inflict severe casualties on the Russians as the Russians mount their operation to drive the Ukrainians out, because the Russians are going to be sending their conscripts. That means soldiers who are not battle-hardened, who are very inexperienced, and therefore they are likely to suffer considerable casualties.

So an example of that was this attack on a convoy. Again, it seemed like a very foolish enterprise just to send a convoy, which was absolutely a sitting duck, for attack. So it’s likely that there will be severe Russian casualties before the Russians succeed in driving the Ukrainians out, of Kursk.

PressTV:
Thank you very much for that, George Szamuely, research fellow at the Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University. Gilbert Doctorow, thank you, independent international affairs analyst from Brussels.

9:02
And with that, we come to an end for this News Review.