Moscow needs 40 thousand men or devastate with bombs to regain the Kursk region: analysts

Juan Pablo Duch

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 18, 2024, p. 20

Moscow. With the surprise factor of the until two weeks ago unimaginable invasion of Russian territory over and the arrival of Russian reinforcements from other fronts in Ukraine, the operation by Kiev troops to occupy as much space as possible in the Russian region of Kursk confirmed yesterday that it has reached a point where it can only advance one or two kilometres per day, while Russia has been continuing its own offensive on the other side of the border for months, also slowly but steadily, in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

In a nutshell, this is the picture that emerges after 12 days of fighting in Kursk and, from the moment there is no more Ukrainian advance into Russian territory, it is practically impossible to predict what will happen, or rather which of the possible scenarios Moscow and kyiv will choose.

Based on information and analysis provided by experts on both sides, the first thing that is obvious is that the Russians and Ukrainians – although the former are cutting off roads and paths to prevent Ukrainian advances and the latter are trying to attack from the flanks – are preparing to fortify their positions, awaiting the next step of their enemy.

The Russians are digging trenches 45 kilometres from the border and the Ukrainians are trying to disrupt the Kremlin’s logistics by blowing up a bridge on the Seima River on Friday and bombing others on the Volfa and Vedma rivers, the Rybar channel, which is close to Russian military intelligence, reported.

Bargaining currency

It is not clear whether the Kremlin will accept foreign troops occupying part of its territory for a while – according to the more pessimistic commentators in Moscow, such as Oleg Tsariov (former pro-Russian deputy of the Ukrainian Parliament), until next winter, and according to the more optimistic ones in kyiv, such as Mikhailo Podolyak, advisor to the presidency, until negotiations are held one day and it can serve as a bargaining chip – or whether it will try to expel them at all costs.

The problem, according to military analyst Konstantin Mashovets, is that Russia has urgently deployed 10 battalions, or about 5,000 troops, from the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhia fronts (the front line stretches for 1,200 kilometers) to stop Ukraine at Kursk, given that kyiv has used only part of the 14 brigades it was preparing as a reserve.

kyiv is keeping the rest of its units on the border, which can enter Kursk if necessary, or wait for more Russian troops to concentrate there in order to strike elsewhere, such as Bryansk, Belgorod or Crimea, for example.

Putin’s dilemma

In order to expel the Ukrainians from its territory, Russia needs, according to experts Yan Matveyev and Pyotr Chernyk, at least 30 to 40 thousand soldiers, 10 percent of its contingent in Ukraine. The Kremlin, according to these and other analysts, does not have any reserves available and, due to the public’s reluctance to send conscripts into combat or announce a general mobilization, is trying to swell the ranks of its army by offering more and more money to those willing to sign a contract, but resources are not inexhaustible. If it does not move those 30 to 40 thousand soldiers from Donetsk and Lugansk, where the bulk of Russian troops in Ukraine are concentrated, and plans to expel the Ukrainians from its territory at any cost, then, according to military analyst Valery Shiriayev, the only thing left is to do. do the same as he did in Bakhmut or Avdiievka: bombard incessantly with aircraft and artillery until the occupied localities were turned into ruins.

However, there are doubts that the Kremlin is willing to raze its own territory, Shiriayev believes.

So far, President Vladimir Putin – although he has put one of his most trusted men, Aleksei Diumin, a member of his current entourage as an advisor, who began his political career as the president’s bodyguard and who was mentioned as a possible successor in the future – in charge of the operation to rescue Kursk – has not authorized the General Staff to send more troops from Donetsk and Lugansk to Kursk, trusting that successes on Ukrainian soil can overshadow setbacks on Russian territory.

From the logic of the Kremlin, which insists on transmitting to its internal audience that a war is taking place in Kursk anti-terrorist operationthe Ukrainian offensive on its territory – according to the majority of Z-bloggers, who support the special military operation in Ukraine and criticize the military leadership – is the best demonstration that Russia was going to be attacked by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a thesis that is repeated by the commentators of Russian public television, but omitted – in the words of Andrei Kolesnikov, columnist of the digital edition The New Timesa weekly newspaper that stopped being published in print in Moscow– say What happened in February 2022 that made the Ukrainians decide to invade Russian soil?.

Although Washington and Brussels deny having participated in the preparation of the Ukrainian attack on Kursk, both official spokesmen for Moscow and independent analysts agree that, without receiving images from the spy satellites of the North Atlantic Alliance, the Ukrainian military command would not have been able to strike the blow that took Russia by surprise.

This was the opinion of Nikolai Patrushev, former secretary of the Russian Security Council, in an interview with the official newspaper on Friday. Newsas did before them – from positions that have nothing to do with the authorities – both the aforementioned expert Valeri Shiriayev, and Ruslan Leviyev, co-president of the Conflict Intelligence Team, an independent Russian organization dedicated to analyzing wars based on all available open sources.