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It shocked many observers—apparently including many Russians—when, on Thursday, Ukrainian sappers riding in an ex-Soviet IMR-2 engineering vehicle breached Russian defenses along the Russia-Ukraine border just south of the Russian village of Novyi Put.
The village is 20 miles west of the main Ukrainian salient in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Six weeks ago, a powerful Ukrainian force—around a dozen battalions from eight or so experienced brigades—invaded Kursk and quickly gained control of 400 square miles of Russian soil.
If it was unclear last week why the Ukrainians would also invade around Novyi Put, it’s a bit clearer now. Backed by tanks and covered by Ukrainian air force warplanes lobbing building-demolishing glide bombs, a Ukrainian tactical group apparently anchored by the 95th Air Assault Brigade is slicing right as it advances past Novyi Put and through the southern blocks of the nearest Russian town, Vesoloe.
That is to say, the Ukrainian troops are turning toward the main Kursk salient. If the Ukrainians attacking northeast from Novyi Put can connect with the Ukrainians in the main salient, they’ll cut off potentially thousands of Russians between them and the border.
But it’s possible the Ukrainians don’t have enough well-equipped forces to complete the maneuver.
The Ukrainian Khorne Group, a team of drone operators supporting the Novyi Put attack, hinted at the encirclement objective at the start of the assault past Novyi Put. “We’ve advanced into new areas, by kilometers, into Russia,” the group stated on Friday. “A group of Russian conscripts numbering in the thousands is at risk of being encircled.”
If the Ukrainians are indeed trying to surround Russian forces, the local geography facilitates the move. The Seym River forms a natural boundary along most of the northern edge of the potential pocket bounded on the left and right flanks by advancing Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian moves in blue, Russian in red.
Google map by David Axe
Ukrainian bombs and rockets have destroyed all the permanent bridges over the Seym in this area, so any Russians south of the Seym—and there could be entire battalions of them—depend on temporary pontoon bridges, or a narrow land bridge through the town of Korenevo, for their resupply.
It’s for this reason that the Ukrainians are relentlessly bombarding the pontoons as soon as the Russians install them. And it’s for the same reason a Ukrainian force anchored by the 225th Assault Battalion has been marching on Korenevo, clearly intending to sever the land bridge.
A Russian counterattack in Kursk that kicked off last week hasn’t made much headway—and, if anything, has worsened the Russian disposition in the potential pocket south of Korenevo by sending additional troops into that pocket.
Geography isn’t everything. The balance of forces in Kursk could weigh on the Ukrainians’ chance of success in closing a potential encirclement. It seems Kyiv has devoted around 10,000 troops to the twin-pronged invasion of Kursk. Moscow may have sent 38,000 troops into the oblast—but many of them are poorly-trained young conscripts.
Russia is struggling to generate trained manpower. Ukraine is struggling to generate any manpower—and is also desperately short of modern armored vehicles. Just four of 14 new brigades the Ukrainian armed forces are standing up have enough modern vehicles, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN.
Zelensky said a lack of equipment is constraining Ukrainian ambitions on the battlefield. “We have the desire, but the tools have not come.”
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