A Russian car hits a mine in Kursk.Ukrainian protection ministry seize
Ukrainian mines are wreaking havoc on Russian forces attacking the 250-square-mile salient Ukrainian forces occupy in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast. In step with Gen. Oleksandr Pavliuk, commander of Ukrainian floor forces, mines have accounted for a 3rd of Russian cars within the 9 days because the Russians introduced their offensive in Kursk.
In a single attack, most likely a botched Nov. 7 assault by way of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade, the Russians misplaced 17 cars “simplest because of detonation of mines,” Pavliuk wrote.
A unmarried Ukrainian engineering unit—the twelfth Fortify Regiment—is liable for laying most of the mines. It seems that laying mines by way of hand and by way of drone, the Ukrainian sappers have executed to the attacking Russians what Russian sappers did to attacking Ukrainians in southern Ukraine 17 months in the past.
Recall that, when a newly arranged Ukrainian corps introduced a long-anticipated counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in June 2023, the corps briefly slowed down in probably the most densest minefields in fresh army historical past. Expecting the Ukrainian offensive, the Russians quadrupled the intensity in their defensive minefields, from 120 meters to 500 meters—and in addition greater the density of mines inside the expanded fields.
The Ukrainian mining operation in Kursk seems to be taking a distinct method. Russian commanders are doing the Ukrainian sappers an enormous choose by way of ordering their forces to assault alongside the similar roads, each day in spite of earlier defeats.
The place the Russians needed to blanket a large house with mines in an effort to block Ukrainian cars shifting alongside roads and fields, the Ukrainians can listen their mines at the few roads main into essentially the most essential sector at the western facet of the Kursk salient. A street intersection close to the village of Zelenyi Shylakh is plagued by dozens of wrecked Russian cars.
Catastrophic losses on this house have pushed day-to-day Russian casualties to greater than 1,500 on moderate—a file top in Russia’s 33-month wider conflict on Ukraine. In spite of the new arrival of 1000’s of North Korean troops, key Russian regiments in Kursk were so badly hollowed out that outnumbered Ukrainian troops have in truth controlled to mount native counterattacks—maximum not too long ago in Novoivanovka, a stone’s throw from Zelenyi Shylakh.
Poetically, Ukrainian forces within the house come with the elite forty seventh Mechanized Brigade, the similar unit that were given slowed down in the ones Russian minefields in Zaporizhzhia in June 2023. For the forty seventh Mechanized Brigade’s war-weary soldiers, all the ones Russian cars blowing up on mines in Kursk is belated revenge for their very own heavy losses final yr.
It’s value asking why the Russians it sounds as if realized not anything from the Ukrainians’ horrible enjoy in Zaporizhzhia in 2023. In step with Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, analysts with the Royal United Products and services Institute in London, the Ukrainian counteroffensive corps in Zaporizhzhia was once constrained by way of its incapacity to behavior “mine reconnaissance intensive.” This is, recognizing newly laid mines proper prior to a deliberate assault.
The Russians will also be suffering to identify the mines peppering their deliberate attack routes. However there’s some other, extra ominous reason for the new heavy losses to Ukrainian mines: Russian scouts are finding the mines—however their commanders are failing to relay correct intelligence to attack teams.
That’s reportedly what came about to these ill-fated marines from the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade within the lead-up to their disastrous assault close to Zelenyi Shylakh beginning on Nov. 7. “False knowledge had in the past been reported that the street (the place apparatus was once later blown up) had come underneath our keep an eye on,” claimed Romanov, a well-liked Russian blogger.
“Logically, after receiving this data, the overall body of workers issued an order to hurricane the agreement,” Romanov defined. “Earlier than the assault, no person even concept to transparent the street of mines.”
Practice me on Twitter. Take a look at my website online or a few of my different paintings right here. Ship me a protected tip.
