Gen. Syrskyi: Kursk operation successfully reduced threat of Russian offensive on Sumy

Spread the love

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi has revealed the strategic objectives behind the country’s surprise cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast in an interview with CNN aired on 5 September. The top general said he believes the operation has been a success.

The Kursk incursion, which started early last month, caught both Russians and Ukraine’s allies by surprise and exposed vulnerabilities in Russia’s military despite its advantage in manpower and equipment. Ukraine secured a swath of Russian territory near Sumy Oblast, pushing Russian artillery out of range and disabling cross-border shelling on nearby communities.

According to Syrskyi, the primary goals of the Kursk operation were

“We prevented them from acting. We moved the fighting to the enemy’s territory so that [the enemy] could feel what we feel every day,” Syrskyi told CNN.

Russian advancement near Pokrovsk stalled, Syrskyi says

Syrskyi also addressed the current situation near Pokrovsk, a strategic city in Donetsk Oblast. The area has been the epicenter of fighting in eastern Ukraine for months and saw accelerated Russian advances in August.

He said Ukraine does everything not to lose Pokrovsk and has managed to stall Russian advances in the area, stating,

“Over the last six days the enemy hasn’t advanced a single meter in the Pokrovsk direction. In other words, our strategy [of diverting Russian troops from Ukraine] is working,” he said

Surskyi added that the Russians concentrated their most trained units in the area, but those now lack maneuverability:

“We’ve taken away their ability to maneuver and to deploy their reinforcement forces from other directions,” he stated, also adding that the amount of artillery shelling and Russian offensive intensity have decreased.

However, the Deep State Map OSINT project, maintaining daily updates to an interactive military map based on open source data, shows that Russian advancements did not fully halt in the recent days, and they advanced near Ukrainsk, and made incremental gains near Selydove and elsewhere.