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31-08-2024
MOSCOW/ KYIV: Ukraine’s deep strikes against Russian military targets and its three-week-old ground offensive inside Russian territory have appeared to be yielding military and political results during the past week.
Russia was reported to be moving its aircraft back from airfields near the Ukrainian border while glide bomb attacks inside Ukraine were reported to have decreased. Evidence that Moscow was scrambling elite units from Ukraine to defend home turf also mounted during the week.
An unnamed White House official told the Politico news website that “90 percent of the planes that launch glide bombs” against Ukrainian front-line positions had been moved back inside Russia.
The independent analysis website Frontelligence agreed that “between the second half of June and mid-July, Russian forces relocated many valuable assets away from the Ukrainian border,” including planes and helicopters.
Ukrainian Colonel Vitaly Sarantsev told a joint news telethon broadcast by Ukrainian channels that the Kursk offensive had greatly reduced Russia’s use of aviation against northeastern Ukraine.
“We felt relief in tactical aviation,” he said on Sunday. “The enemy has significantly reduced its use in our direction. If in previous periods we had 30 to 50 antiaircraft missiles per day only [in the Sumy region], then yesterday the enemy used air strikes twice, using four antiaircraft missiles and 11 unguided air missiles.”
Units operating in hotly contested Chasiv Yar in the eastern region of Donetsk have also reported a drop in glide bombs this month.
Vadym Mysnyk, a spokesman for the Siversk tactical group, said: “It is a sign that we are thinning out their air force and hitting airfields, and we have pushed the enemy away from the border a little.”
No effect on the Pokrovsk front
There was also increasing evidence that Moscow was having trouble stopping the Ukrainian counter-invasion in Kursk and was increasingly tapping elite units to do so.
Russian military reporters and geo-located footage have revealed that elements of the 810th and 155th naval infantry brigades, the 11th Airborne Brigade, and the 51st and 56th airborne regiments were redeployed to fight in Kursk.
The 810th and 155th naval infantry brigades had been fighting in Kharkiv, where Russia launched a new incursion in May. The 51st Airborne Regiment had been fighting in Siversk, and the 11th Airborne Brigade was in Chasiv Yar, both in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Estimates of how many soldiers Moscow has diverted from Ukraine vary. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii estimated it was in the region of 30,000. If so, that would be a significant proportion of the more than 700,000 soldiers Russia is estimated to have in Ukraine.
The Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank, estimated that Russia would need 60,000 soldiers to win back territory in Kursk once Ukrainian defences were dug. London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies agreed with that figure but Russia has refused to let up on its priority offensive towards the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, where roughly a third of its daily assaults have taken place. Here, it has progressed by at least 2km (1.2 miles) in the past week, advancing through the settlements of Hrodivka and Novohrodivka.
Since taking Avdiivka in February, Russian troops have advanced 34km (21 miles) westwards, forming a salient that is now within 12km (7.5 miles) of Pokrovsk. Sarantsev admitted that the Kursk action had had no effect on the Pokrovsk front. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
