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Sep 16·edited Sep 16

Thanks for the update

Even for a properly equipped, trained, led and prepared and covered unit, for such a 'dense' area f*ups are expected and kind of inevitable.

For me it looks like they could manage it.

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Thanks Tom!

And yet I’m somewhat doubtful that the current counter-counteroffensive by ZSU is going that smoothly or that farther into the region. Because, usually when ZSU breaks into a certain place, the Russians are quick to scramble all their attack jets like Su-25 and helis that are nearby, and then you get the casual claims of an aircraft being shot down (regardless whether true or not). That was the case in Kursk 1.0. And now I don’t hear anything ….

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Sep 16·edited Sep 16Author

The Russians would - 1000% sure - do the same in this case. See: scramble all the available Su-25s and Su-24s and Su-34s... BUT...

1.) The mass of these was evacuated to bases outside the 500km-range of ATACMS, Storm Shadows and SCALP-EGs, which means that their reaction time is much longer (about 1 hour at least, if the aircraft are kept at 'alert +5 minutes' readiness... much longer if not).

2.) The presence of ZSU's MIM-23 HAWKS and NASAMS is making sure there's (so far) next to nothing to be seen of the VKS in this battle - except in terms of dropping dozens of UMPKs from safe distances, of course.

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"I’m somewhat doubtful that the current counter-counteroffensive by ZSU is going that smoothly or that farther into the region"

Strange then Russia is evacuating residents from multiple villages in the Kursk region that are close to the border with Ukraine amid Kyiv’s cross-border incursion, the local governor said Monday. Authorities have decided to order the “obligatory evacuation of settlements in the Rylsky and Khomutovsky districts that are within a 15-kilometre (nine mile) zone adjacent to the border with Ukraine,” Governor Alexei Smirnov said on Telegram.

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They don't want people to get killed and they relatives writing letters to Putin, news agencies and social networks.

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Many thanks for your optimistic report. It is encouraging because today Tokayev declared that "Russia can never be defeated". But everybody educated in history knows that "Russia" was defeated many times and even by Poland in 1920. I wonder whether Tokayev is so ignorant or simply servile.

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"Russia can't be defeated" is a commonly heard statement and probably the single best product of the Kremlin's propaganda arm, ever. It can be considered way more successful than their other tropes like chauvinism, homophobia and antivaxxerism, because those are present topics heavily laden with personal sentiment, but Russia's invincibility is very easily disproven even with limited objective knowledge, yet still being parroted even by reasonably educated people who were already alive during the '80s adventure in Afghanistan.

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I think that people in Western countries are not interested in Russia in such a way as to know how many times Russia (or the Soviet Union) was defeated. So if the Western media were interested in disproving Russian propaganda they could easily do it. While visiting St.Petersbourg in 2021 I saw a lot of billboards about the "victorious Russian fleet" that was victorious last time in 18th century.

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Sure, people can't be expected to be familiar with the Ingrian war. But those who care about the whole thing as much as to express an opinion about it could at least think as far as, "hey, wasn't there that Czar guy who was killed along with his family? how could that happen?".

But sure, you have a point, media could go, "here's a list of conflicts in which Russia was handed their ass on a plate, asterisk marks the cases when it was done by a much smaller country". But it wouldn't generate enough clicks to worth the effort.

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"French care only about the French corpses" and the same is valid for other Western countries except those having common border with Russia.

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Pure manipulation. "Russia cannot be conquered" - I would agree with such statement, it is simply too huge to control in a classic way.

Ru was beaten by Osmans/Turks, by Mongols, by Tatars, by Chechens in many Caucasian wars, by Germans during WWI, by Afghans, by Poles and many more. Europeans study these wars during school time.

Every time Ru faces organized and well-trained enemy, it fails. main prob of RU-UA war is that bigger and smaller Soviet armies are clashing. UA is loosing mainly due to incompetent corrupted bureaucrats and silly PR-isch politicians: roads instead of fortifications, flowers instead of UAVs, bribes instead of long/mid-range missiles etc. Never ending story

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It is surely all Ukraine`s faults that West in fact guaranteed nothing in return for Ukrainian nukes, that the West (mainly the USA) wants to manage war like a deal. I see you are also one of the victims of Russian propaganda. I also wonder why you are following Tom Cooper.

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ouch, contact Tupolev 16, please - he brands me as UA PRBS, you brands me as Pu fan)) i am totally confused.

UA fckd up back in 1994 while negotiating with West and Ru. or it negotiated under extreme badly circumstances and failed.

Anyway - memorandum is not a document at all, completely useless paper. so i would advise to forget about it at all.

West will always manage "alien wars" from a cynical PoV. in this case both Ru and unfortunately Ua are not subjects, but objects of political games.

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Who are you to advise country at war? Cynicism of men sitting and writing silly comments in security makes me sick.

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Elena stick with us. The strong majority in my country (UK) deplore our failure honour the guarantee. They also loathe Russian lies and I believe they are very interested in seeing the lies exposed. The reason nobody says much about the mighty Russia lie is that we all know it's a joke and there are many more important lies to deal with.

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Everybody in Ukraine is thankful to UK for its help.

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Oh, cmon: you have no idea who am i. Better ask yourself how would you call people stealing from country at war (eggs for 0,5 eur/peace or flowers planting in Pokrovsk in June-July 2024). Then ask yourself where is mil production in country at war: 2,5 years, still almost 0 ammo production. Pathetic cries about sitting in security and so, please, keep for someone else.

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I have now a very good idea who you are - a scandal-mongering person.

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> Ukraine`s faults that West in fact guaranteed nothing in return for Ukrainian nukes

Well, Ukrainians took the deal. Surely there's at least a lesson to learn.

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I wonder whether you have ever been compassionate in your life. Your comments are simply disgusting.

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The lesson is that big countries bully little ones. The best we can say is that our people may have been sincere at the time. Unfortunately if they did have good intentions they didn't take long to blow away in the wind.

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The way to hell is paved with good intensions.

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Sep 16·edited Sep 16

The lesson is not to expect someone else to do the right thing for you. Think for yourself, be prepared, don't take bad deals, don't let your representatives who take bad deals off the hook, don't choose pleasantries over competence and preparedness. That's what I had in mind. If you have a bad outcome and change nothing you yourself did then you'll have the same outcome again. Noone else will change just to make things better for you if you yourself don't. And in this case that starts with admitting own naivette at the time and looking if that was fixed in the present or not. (It mostly wasn't)

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The US _wanted_ to get did of Ukrainian nukes and avoid proliferation at any cost. Ukraine was economically bankrupt and knew they had to be cooperative. It was, by all means, an unequal treaty.

On the other hand, there was this worldwide sentiment that the age of potential major wars is finally over. The deal stinks if we have the benefit of hindsight, but it could easily seem like an okay deal back then.

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As always a big “thank you”, Tom, for the update. More because this one makes a little more clear the situation in Kursk Oblast (a really confused thing). I’m in accord: if Ukraine wants a total victory need to be rid of some “top brass” donkeys… and start to produce his own ammo and weapons, because Western politicians are no more than a bunch of corrupt thieves. Slava Ukraïne!

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Sep 16Liked by Sarcastosaurus

Currently some OPERATIONAL surroundings of Ru troops reported in Kursk oblast. I pray these were 155 MIB

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Dear Tom I been following you from the very first day. Out of curiosity from where you did pull up figure of 20.000 losses of RF in course of one month only in Kursk?

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20000/30 = 666 men/daily.

If you count 200/300/500/PoWed together, take into account 80% of troops are unexperienced convicts and fresh-backed "kontraktniks", so the figure is not something extreme at all.

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author
Sep 16·edited Sep 16Author

If you check my posts from... not sure if it was the last week or the week before - you can find a list of all the GRU, VDV and VSRF units re-deployed to Kursk.

....together with their approximate strengths.

(Meanwhile I should update that list, because additional units were sent there, of course.... while others have suffered losses, and yet others turned out to be present in 'company-trength only'.)

Point is: 35,000-40,000 is about 'the maximum'. And is 'logical', too, because the GRU (and thus the GenStab in Moscow) knew the approximate composition of the ZSU in Kursk (about 10,000 troops), and thus 'knew' they 'need not more'. Nor have they had more (than these 35,000-40,000).

....and still, after bringing in all these reinforcements, they can't but run a counterattack with more than two regiments and one brigade?

Well, I belong to the kind of people who, when drawing such conclusions, promptly asks: how comes?

The explanation can be found in my earlier reports: see losses of the 810th NIB, just for example. This came in with five battalions - and yet is meanwhile largely inactive. Just holding positions. Only one of these five appeared to take part in this 'counter-offensive'. What do you think: they've got nothing better to do but to camp around and eat their rations? And the GenStab in Moscow plus the FSB would let them do so....?

The same in regards of the 11th VDV. This was one of first big formations rushed to Kursk in reaction to the Ukrainan attack, but then hit so often, the first two weeks of the offensive, nowadays its nowhere to be seen: still licking its wounds.

The same for the 200th Arctic. Sure, some say one of its battalions was sent to Korenevo - and yes, that's making sense: after all, somebody had to replace the 51st VDV once this was sent into assault, because the VKS Rifles have proven to be a shaky formation.

But, and in grand total: all the Russians could do was 'two regiments and a brigade'-sized attack. They couldn't launch a simultaneous counteroffensive from multiple directions.

In Donbass, they keep on sending units into assaults until these are down to less than 10% of their nominal strenght. But, here, in Kursk, in 'Holly Mother Russia' - not? And that although Putin ordered 'liberation by 1 October'...?

Why?

Conclusion is on hand: even '50% loss' is 'a conservative estimate'

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Sep 16·edited Sep 16Liked by Sarcastosaurus

'after bringing in all these reinforcements, they can't but run a counterattack with more than two regiments and one brigade? '

I would take the whole thing rather as a fluke than a really organized counterattack, but anyway - if that number is the big total of the out-of-action then it might be indeed on the conservative side...

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This thing with Russian huge lossrs has no logic. The russians still have a long salient inside the Kursk salient.

This salient will then be filled with troops and driven to Sudzha just like at Ocheretyne. Th Ukrainians should cut this salient because the Russians have huge losses and it's an easy operation, etc.

Russian small losses and lack of Ukrainian troops or large Ukrainian losses make more sense. The salient is long but properly defended so the Ukrainians can just harass it.

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author

Wait until you see latest developments, Mihail.

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Maybe but time is running the same for both sides.

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Sep 17Liked by Sarcastosaurus

Just stop thinking about the Russian side as a regular military.

Patchwork rugs don't sell well as Persian.

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I know it might sound stupid, but... I can't stop myself from asking:

is it possible that the collapse of the 103rd brigade was programmed and used as a bait for the 155th NIB?

We have the 155th reporting that there are no defense lines or fortifications in the area, so they won't be able to use those at their advantage.

We have Ukraine army pushing from south into its flank.

We have a direct push towards Glushkovo.

Should the 155th retreat , the only option seems to be toward Snagost, creating a big concentration of Russian troops in one place... with no defense lines .. and with logistic lines under enemy fire.

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Sep 16Liked by Sarcastosaurus

unfortunately, too genius for GS-U... but could work occasionally )) hope, you are right

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Things don't always need to be planned to work out. See the battle of Tannenberg in the first world war for example.

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I prefere more Napoleon wars 1813-14 in Germany and France: tactical geniusly, mobile and powerful))

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Yes, but Napoleons battles were more intentionally than Hindenburgs.

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It does seem more like a smart and lucky fix following a mess-up. Baiting the enemy is a real thing, but you don't do it by sacrificing crucial units like droners in a TD brigade - you use well-trained, experienced, and highly mobile troops, who can pull off a feigned retreat without suffering heavy casualties in the meantime.

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Sorry, by best will, but no way was that 'intentional'. Have seen the photos of vehicles knocked out during the withdrawal of the 103rd, and the troops getting captured. That's not looking like 'intentional withdrawal to drag the Russians into an ambush', as some are claiming.

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Sep 16·edited Sep 16

The only maybe-realistic thing I can think of closest to this theory is that they were planning for that new incursion for some time already, just the number of Russian troops in place was not tempting enough yet. And then they sent in the assembled troops prematurely to save the day and close the lid.

But those losses they took looked awful real, no joke.

It's only the Russians who takes WH40k as a cookbook, not those Ukrainians who could pull that whole Kursk thing through.

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Thank you very much. For once, there is a little light in your report.

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Thanks for the roll up. Good stuff. I am wondering what your take on "this was a UA set up for Russia" theory floating around is. It seems the UA had a lot of stuff in the right place to react. They tend to react faster than the RU overall, but this was still pretty damned quick.

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I withstand a temptation on commenting of "murderous" Russian losses. Some cliches are hard to die.

I will point out on the generally unnoticed information that RU forces re-started the use of heavy Orion UAVs after a many months break. At least 5 UA tanks were destroyed last days. Here, one of the recent strikes:

https://t.me/mod_russia/43461

Looks like UA SAM "decoys" took a heavy beating.

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1. why "many months break"? maybe due to its ineffectiveness? such UAVs are too big, slow and perfect detectable by AD.

2. check news from 31.08.2024 - at least one Orion UAV claimed downed in Kursk oblast.

3. taking into account very limited Orions production (up to 30 pieces operational in VSRF) another "many months break" to be expected now.

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author

Well, one of survivors from the 51st VDV Regiment explained in his Telegram post how this company had 100 troops when it went into this battle, and only 10 were still around by the time they were withdrawn.

Of course, you are free to know better, and correct him.

Also to declare this for 'light losses'.

Even no losses.

No problem with me.

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there is always classical Ru option "no firm facts, fake!"

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Tom, Russian Ru Telegram channels are full of videos of captured UA soldiers, stating that they are the last in their platoon/regiment/battalion, and etc. However, to check the credentials are next to impossible. Both sides are waging (very skillfully) propaganda war. So, it's just a matter of taste which side claims to take.

My point still stands the same: both sides are equal in number of fpvs, artillery, MLRSs and tanks. Himars are offset by Iskanders. Soldiers on both sides are eqlually determined and trained, generals on both side are similar idiotic. The question: how could RU losses be "murderous" and U A "moderate"? Especially considering total advantage of RU forces in the air?

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Let us look inti the facts. Operation has started 40 days ago. It has achieved more success then Vovchansk operation. Now let us think of the factors, sure we are not considering either side fights half strength?

So Vovchansk operation was prepared for months, and involved up to 50K grouping with let us say 20K fully equiped and battle ready (ready of offence)?

On UA side we now hear about 10K involved and more success. How is that possible? With 600 POW you could not say that lines were thinly protected.

Just compare those two very similar operations and what do you think factors that played there, if you say all is equal.

Also we are not considering that Vovchansk is half hearted effort or feint, right?

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If you get captured you have no clear picture of who survived.

If you get withdrawn into the rear and refit, you do, because everybody still available needs to show up at the point. Otherwise they are gone, no matter if killed, wounded, captured or deserted.

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If you get captured and get told what to say, you say.

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Sep 17·edited Sep 17

I meant smth different: you can't trust without double checking any Telegram posts as only gods know who post. As per the prisoners from both side: surely they will tell anything that captors demand.

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you've ment almost everything right, incl Ru aerial supremacy. but you have totally forgotten tactical differences: Ru uses "iron fist", moving mostly in mech convoys, UA uses mobile def "10000 cuts", moving in small mobile groups, ambushes and rapid concentrated kicks. it works perfectly in forests and swamps of Kursk oblast. FSB gens have no idea how to withstand it and even Ru PRBS admits it. thats why I agree with Tom in sense of temporary "murderous" losses

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I have a theory there )) Orion UAVs are equivalent of Bayraktars, and those were knocked out by standard ru air defences. So they are too large and vulnerable. So seeing them in battlefield means all proper sized recon UAVs were knocked out, and they have to risk those.

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Why are you killing captured Ukrainians? Are you mocking them?https://t.me/dragons_group5/1619

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Thank you Tom this is an informative report

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Excellent Tom, as always. That cleared up a lot of queries in my head as it was a very chaotic time for a bit there. Makes sense now 👍. Let's see where the Ukrainians go next. Fire and manoeurve, fire and manoeurve 👍

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Sep 16Liked by Sarcastosaurus

"successfully lose another 10,000 VDV- and VSRF troops and then most of the south-western Kursk Oblast" - i'll take that with a beer on the side, thanks!!!

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Since i am no expert i have this stupid question. How long does it take to open up a new frontline like they did against Glushkovo? I guess it is more than 30 minutes. They have to put togheter minefield equipment, personel,tanks etc, and have the logistics to support them further on?

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Depends on the force involved. If it's 'just 1 brigade'.... that's going to be about a week.

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Definitely and that looks more planned to me, to get more boars into the right place, i.e. South of the Sejm.

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Tom: NAMAESTE!!!!

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Sep 17Liked by Sarcastosaurus

As long as no one from the venerable Russian capital is sent to war, Muscovites don't care how many Russians die in the war. Putin can lose 3 million of his own soldiers, but as long as Moscow is not affected, everything is fine in the country....

If Ukraine and the West want Putin to end the war, the governments must finally start confronting Moscow directly. The war will only end when Muscovites start to stop being happy.

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Bomben auf Moskow (c) 😂

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