Top general says Ukrainian forces have captured almost as much Russian territory in the last week as Russia has land in Ukraine this year

That, or “reclaiming their own land” was a bit more expansive than we all realized /s

I've heard Kursk has the gas pipeline to Europe.

we need to stop calling everything we don't like nazism. Russia will need to be de-Putin'd

I'm sure access to Western intelligence doesn't hurt either.

I was watching an old documentary about ww2. When France declared war on Germany they just sat on there border watching them. Some British politician or general or something was there and asked why they didn't shoot them. They said "they aren't bothering us so we don't bother them". They made one offence at the start of the war when Germany's western flank was entirely exposed (it was also the only French offence of the entire war) they went about 100m then came back.

Then Germany attacked somewhere else and they folded.

Its actually amazing how much of a cluster fuck the start of ww2 was. Bringing back horses after inventing the tank 20 years before and using it ti win ww1 levels of intelligence.

Is it? Russia just got new claims for this war.

Why in the world would you want to create a new iteration of the same shit?

What did the fish do to deserve that?

To disperse the army from the northeastern fronts. Russia is now forced to defend the entire border and cannot focus their attacks on their previous objectives.

This is a good move.

I hope its not just for negotiating.

I hope by breaking the Russian front, they have created openings that they can now exploit to tear down Russian defenses.

Russia has created a really difficult frontal defense thats many layers of mine fields and defensive positions interlaced. But now their sides and backs are exposed and it's much easier for Ukraine to out flank the defense and unseat Russian defenses.

this has to be something designed to pull forces away from other places. I don't think Ukraine is planning on holding it for any length of time.

we saw video come out about 200 miles from the front in Kursk showing military transport trucks that had been struck by Ukraine as they were going to reinforce the region, which means Ukraine has dedicated deep strike capabilities to this part of the battlefield.

I think the intention is to kill and destroy as much Russian personnel and materiel as they can while it's being transported. like they've mapped out all of the travel lines in to and out of Kursk, and they have dedicated weapons platforms prepared to destroy anything that comes up those roads. they'll be able to blitz a whole bunch of Russian equipment without even having to engage them on the ground, if those trucks were full (there were stacked bodies in the video), that's 300 casualties without having to put any of your infantry in danger.

Blitzing into largely undefended territories and nabbing large amounts of territory is kind of the easy part. As anyone who plays any sort of RTS, the key question is how you set up defenses and maintain logistics to thwart counter-offensives. The good news is that Ukraine has options. They can choose to dig in before Russia amasses troops to attack and legitimately try to hold onto the territory, or they can simply back out and use this as a skirmish to divide Russian forces before launching another offensive elsewhere.

This seems to a) be intended to divide Russian attention and spread their forces out, b) be used in negotiation and applying domestic pressure to Putin, and c) provide a greater buffer for air-defense to counter inbound artillery and missiles. Who knows for sure though.

As much as I hate linking to it, you could probably find out by asking in the defcon warning system forums.