Ukraine War, 13 October 2024: And the Winner is...

Hello everybody!

Just a short update entirely focusing on Kursk… The reason is that there are more details on what was going on there, the last 3-4 days.

Namely, the Russians are claiming that they have deployed the 155^th NIB, plus the 56^th VDV and 106^th VDV Divisions in the Korenevo area, for a ‘second phase’ of their counteroffensive. Accordingly, the 810^th NIB was re-deployed for attacks from south-east.

For the start, so they report, on 10 October, VDV-assaults on Olgovka – a village about 5km east of Korenevo – not only recovered the place, but actually ‘surrounded 1,500 Ukrainian troops’. This was also reported by their media.

Finally, they say a pincer attack by the 155^th NIB recovered Novaya Sorochina and the Pokrovski Farm, thus encircling the Ukrainian troops in Lyubimovka. As next, and ‘taking Ukrainians by surprise’, the brigade bypassed Lyubimovka and reached the road connecting Korenevo with Sudzha in the Zeleny Shlyakh area. By the morning of 11 October, they claim to have recovered Novoivanovka and prompted Ukrainians to withdraw from Leonidovo, too…

For a while, it appeared to the Russians like if they would have the Ukrainians on the run. Indeed, even Ukrainian war-bloggers reported a break-through of the left flank of the Kursk Group and a ‘very precarious situation’. They reported a particularly pitched battle for Novoivanovka: this should have been so intensive, that even drone-pilots and artillerymen had to engage in combat (as infantry).

However, so the Russians, the ZSU ‘merely’ withdrew into the forest south of Lyubimovka and to the Tolstoy Lug area, and then - probably the 82nd Airborne - hit the 155^th NIB into the back as this attempted to drive down the road for Sudzha. Another Russian reported the ZSU lost four villages (including Olgovka and Zeleny Shlyakh), but then brought in reinforcements from Sumy and counterattacked. It was only at that point in time that the Ukrainians (i.e. their regular units, whether already present in the Kursk Oblast, or really recalled from Sumy and rushed to the scene) stopped the Russians by causing them heavy losses mentioned yesterday. For similar reason, the all the attempts of the 810^th NIB to punch through positions in Plekhovo ‘stalled’. Read: they were repelled.

Armoured fighting vehicles of either the VDV or the 155th NIB knocked out while trying to advance down the road from Korenevo to Sudza, sometimes on 11 or 12 October.

Moreover, so the Russians, the ‘1,500 Ukrainian troops surrounded in the Olgovka area’ withdrew ‘through forest’ towards south, and thus ‘escaped encirclement’. The same for Lyubimovka: the Ukrainians there ‘disappeared’ out of the enirclement, ‘through a forest south of it’.

Still, the Russians are happy: although reporting they’ve captured next to no ZSU troops, they say the Ukrainian bulge into the Kursk Oblast was reduced by more than 50%.

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I know, about 90% of you are now going to complain that I’m ‘listening to the Russians’. However, fact is: for once, and regardless how few details are they revealing, both sides are nearly in agreement about what happened there.

And yes, of course, I do not know the backgrounds nor the how comes. I’m no proverbial fly on the walls in specific headquarters in Kyiv or Moscow. I can only guess about these. Still, there is just one Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and he is well-known for micromanaging everything. Therefore, cannot avoid the impression that there can only be one person that signed the order based on the fantastic idea of ‘replacing’ battalions from some of best-equipped- and trained regular ZSU brigades by three brigades of the Territorial Defence (as obvious from my map from two days ago, the Lyubimovka area was defended by the 103^rd and 104^th TD brigades; Plekhovo was defended by the 129^th TD)… and that while knowing a Russian counteroffensive is coming, and not waiting to do such things only after the onset of the rainy season.

Hand on heart, this is making it crystal clear: the commander- and the GenStab-U are better than Zhukov, Manstein, Rommel, and Patton – combined… and their achievements are worth nothing less than the prestigious prize of ‘Military Genius of the Year 2024’.