MILITARY & STRATEGIC:
A VERY BAD DAY FOR RUSSIA

Yesterday was a record casualty day for the Russians with a total loss of 1,570 men.
The last couple of days have been brutal with what seems to be increasing desperation to achieve results creating indisciplined and poorly prepared operations.
Ukraine knows that Kursk is about to be a focus of operations because Putin has apparently made it clear internally, there can’t be any talks with Ukraine holding that card as part of the negotiations.
Over the weekend the Russians screwed up their own attack in the Seversk area, opening up a new attack vector from the northwest, having previously failed from other directions on this salient.
The Ukrainian 54th Motorised Brigade prepared defences in depth to deal with just such an attack. This time the attack came along the top of the high ground so that the Ukrainians didn’t have that as a defensive advantage. If the Russians could get them off of the hills, it would restore some mobility to their stalled advance.
The hill line is quite narrow and the Russians felt surprise was better than preparing the ground with bombs and artillery.
The Ukrainians were not taken by surprise. They know how the Russians think and they knew sooner or later they would try this move.
The defence contained everything you would want for such an operation and with barely a 1km width on top of the hills and only a single road in the Russians were walking into a trap.
Eleven armoured vehicles and 100 or so soldiers pushed into the area- before they even got very far the Stugna-P ATGM’s were taking out vehicles.
Russian doctrine requires that artillery is used to suppress ATGM units, but a failure to coordinate with the batteries in the rear left the assault out in the open, unsupported. Sloppy staff work and failure to communicate effectively seems almost unforgivable at this stage of the war, but it speaks of how inexperienced many Russian units are - and that’s a direct result of the relentless losses they suffered previously and yet again throwing in untrained troops with no real world knowledge.
The whole offensive operation collapsed as drones reduced the remaining vehicles to heaps of scrap and the soldiers were taken out by Mavic grenade drones. Some did try to attack and died, the rest fled.
Unusually this attack was heavily criticised by Russian bloggers and even made some minor headlines - suggesting official acceptance that things are not going well but targeting individual commanders as incompetent. As usual they don’t address the problem- it’s lack of training and the relentless use and waste of manpower that lies at the core of it. As they don’t seem to have any means or desire for tackling that issue, nothing will change.
Up in Kursk the Russians have finally launched their first stage counter attacks in the upper Kursk salient. It’s been almost a month since things stabilised there after their initial significant advances.
The big issue for both sides was how useful would the NK forces deployed there actually be?
The target was the village of Malya Locknya, which is a crossroads and contains a heavily fortified area based around a women’s prison that sits next to a main road.
The Russians came down from the north and in from the west.
Ukraine had prepared a defence using some of its best troops. The heroic 47th, 87th Air Mobile, 17th Mechanised and 80th Air Mobile Brigades were ready and waiting.
Well prepared mine fields along the likely routes of attack, along with effective drone operations units were ready to take down as many enemy as necessary.
The Russian attack from the north came with some 15 BTR’s and 150 troops from the 810th Marine Brigade- apparently with a number of NK soldiers mixed in with them.
Three BTR’s hit mines and died with troops onboard before they even reached the combat zone.
By the time they reached their objective, a small hamlet, a total of five were already gone. Another nine were destroyed in quick succession forcing the Russians to flee with what they had left, the last BTR destroyed.CONTINUES…