Valuable vehicles destroyed
Drone shows losses of Ukrainian breakthrough attempts in Kursk
October 11, 2024, 8:30 p.m
In the Russian Kursk region, Kiev’s armed forces have been advancing on another axis of attack since September. But the advance seems to have come to a standstill near the village of Veseloe. A Russian drone video now shows the consequences of the repelled Ukrainian attacks.
As part of the Ukrainian offensive in the Russian Kursk region, Kiev’s units managed a second border breakthrough on September 12th near the settlement of Nowy Put, about 32 kilometers west of the main attack point. Observers suspect that the Ukrainian armed forces initially wanted to head north from Novy Put and then turn east and form a cauldron in order to cut off thousands of Russian soldiers from the hinterland. But after weeks of fighting, the advance north of Nowy Put appears to have stalled in the fields of the town of Veseloe.
According to the US magazine Forbes, around September 20, a Ukrainian combat group with Western vehicles rolled along the main road that connects Veseloe with the Glushkovo traffic junction, a good seven kilometers away. But according to the report, the Russian 106th Guards Airborne Division expected the attack and repelled it and other attacks in the following days.
A drone video released by the division this week shows the extent of Ukrainian losses. In the one-minute clip, 17 destroyed vehicles of foreign origin can be seen, including two Swedish CV9040 armored personnel carriers, a German Marder, two Stryker US wheeled infantry fighting vehicles, two Turkish Kirpi troop carriers and a Bradley armored personnel carrier as well as an M113 personnel carrier from the USA.
According to Forbes, the use of the vehicles underlines the importance that the Ukrainian General Staff attaches to the advance at Novy Put. Accordingly, elements of the 21st and 47th Mechanized Brigades (which use CV9040s and Bradleys) and the 95th Air Assault Brigade (which has Marders and Strykers) have joined the 225th Assault Battalion and 501st Marine Battalion attacking towards Veseloe. According to the magazine, the units are among the best units in the Ukrainian armed forces. But even these elite troops do not seem to have succeeded in advancing to Glushkovo so far.
“Unless the Ukrainians can advance along the main road connecting these settlements, their apparent overarching goal of meeting the main advance in the Kursk region remains a pipe dream,” Forbes said. However, things are no better for Russian troops in the area. If counterattacks were unsuccessful, Moscow’s units would also have suffered heavy material losses. There would be as many destroyed Russian as Ukrainian vehicles on the main road and surrounding fields. For Kiev, however, the failures are likely to be significantly more painful simply because of the West’s hesitant arms deliveries.