{"id":1482303,"date":"2024-08-08T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1482303"},"modified":"2024-08-08T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T10:00:00","slug":"ukraines-sneak-attack-against-russias-kursk-region-might-be-its-last-hurrah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/ukraines-sneak-attack-against-russias-kursk-region-might-be-its-last-hurrah\/1482303\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine’s Sneak Attack Against Russia’s Kursk Region Might Be Its Last Hurrah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine’s Sneak Attack Against Russia’s Kursk Region Might Be Its Last Hurrah<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Russia is fighting to fend off Ukraine\u2019s sneak attack its Kursk Region, though conflicting reports have emerged about the location of these clashes. <\/strong>The\u00a0Russian Defense Ministry<\/a>\u00a0claimed that all the fighting has taken place on the Ukrainian side of the border, while\u00a0Rybar<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which boasts nearly 1.2 million subscribers and functions as a think tank of sorts \u2013 said that it\u2019s taking place inside of Russia\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n

Whatever the truth may be, this latest development is still immensely important.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Simply put, it might be Ukraine\u2019s last hurrah since it represents a massive gamble to open up a new front inside of Russia\u2019s pre-2014 borders with the intent of having its foes redeploy some of their troops to Kursk from Donbass, where they\u2019ve continued gradually gaining ground this year. <\/strong>Russia had hitherto braced for yet another attack against neighboring Belgorod Region, ergo the\u00a0difficult but necessary<\/a>\u00a0decision to impose a strict security regime there late last month, so it was taken by surprise. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Prior to that, there was\u00a0serious concern<\/a>\u00a0that Ukraine might be preparing to launch an offensive into Belarus, which could have expanded the conflict and possibly served as a pretext for\u00a0Polish involvement<\/a>. Taken together in light of what just happened in Kursk Region, Ukraine\u2019s moves in those two directions might have been meant in hindsight to \u201cpsyche-out\u201d Russia, thus facilitating its latest attack. Unlike prior\u00a0cross<\/a>–border<\/a>\u00a0raids, this one also involves uniformed Ukrainian troops, not terrorist proxies.<\/p>\n

Nobody took Ukraine seriously when it\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it plans to launch another counteroffensive by sometime later this year, though what\u2019s presently unfolding might be what its policymakers had in mind. That said, the scale isn\u2019t anywhere near what last year\u2019s\u00a0failed counteroffensive<\/a>\u00a0was, and it\u2019s not truly a counteroffensive since Russia wasn\u2019t attacking Ukraine from Kursk. Nevertheless, it\u2019s still the largest cross-border attack so far, and it was clearly planned for some time instead of being an impromptu raid.<\/p>\n

These observations don\u2019t imply that it\u2019ll succeed, however, since the\u00a0military-strategic dynamics<\/a>\u00a0have been trending in Russia\u2019s favor for the entire year. <\/strong>After all, Ukraine is diverting limited troops and equipment from the Donbass front to the Kursk one, and this could easily backfire by creating an opening that Russia could exploit. Furthermore, they\u2019re unlikely to hold whatever they might have captured in Kursk, thus precluding the possibility that they can \u201ctrade it back\u201d during peace talks.<\/p>\n

Even so, the very fact that what\u2019s turned into a two-day-long battle at the time of this analysis\u2019 publication could even happened in the first place shows that Ukraine still has some tricks up its sleeve, namely its continued ability to evade Russia\u2019s surveillance, intelligence, and reconnaissance. Russia didn\u2019t detect any notable buildup near Kursk\u2019s border ahead of time, only Belarus\u2019 and Belgorod\u2019s, otherwise it would have launched preemptive strikes and imposed a security regime along the border.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to knock Russia but to draw attention to NATO\u2019s impressive tactical capabilities in being able to successfully disguise its proxy\u2019s sneak attack. This contributed to the growing number of civilian casualties that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova\u00a0condemned<\/a>\u00a0as proof of Kiev\u2019s terrorism. It might get a lot worse than even that before it gets better too if Ukraine is able to achieve a breakthrough in Kursk Region that leads to it threatening the eponymous nearby nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n

The odds of that happening are low though according to Major General Apty Alaudinov, who\u2019s the deputy chief of the Russian Armed Forces\u2019 military and political department and commander of the Akhmat special forces unit according to\u00a0TASS<\/a>. Another point to make though is that Rybar\u2019s earlier hyperlinked report claimed that Ukraine seized control of a gas pipeline transit station, which if true, could end up seeing that facility destroyed and thus cut off Russian gas to its Central European clients.<\/p>\n

Kiev has an interest in punishing Hungary and Slovakia for their anti-war positions, hence why it\u00a0recently sanctioned<\/a>\u00a0a Russian oil company that had an EU waiver to continue supplying those two, so it might accordingly want to inflict maximum damage against them by destroying the aforesaid gas facility. To be clear, Rybar\u2019s report hasn\u2019t been confirmed and might be untrue, but its importance and Alaudinov\u2019s remarks about the nearby nuclear power plant rest in highlighting the huge stakes involved in Kursk.<\/p>\n

For these reasons, it can be concluded that this was in the works for a while and is therefore likely to be Ukraine\u2019s last hurrah, which it\u2019s only attempting now out of desperation to receive some relief along the Donbass front where Russia continues to gain ground and might be on the brink of a breakthrough<\/strong>. Russia will likely soon regain its lost territory, if any has really been captured by Ukraine that is, and then make Kiev pay for this dastardly sneak attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 08\/08\/2024 – 02:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/ukraines-sneak-attack-against-russias-kursk-region-might-be-its-last-hurrah<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ukraine’s Sneak Attack Against Russia’s Kursk Region Might Be Its Last Hurrah Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack, Russia is fighting to fend off Ukraine\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1482304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1482303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1482303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1482304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1482303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1482303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1482303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}