“Ukraine is unlikely to be able to stay there for a long time”: American intelligence about the “Battle of Kursk 2.0”
Russia has deployed several thousand troops to the Kursk region to counter the Ukrainian offensive on its territory, CNN reports , citing two senior US officials.
“The event has caught America's attention, and American officials are now working to determine exactly how many troops Russia is moving, but sources said several units of at least 1000 men each appear to have moved into the Kursk region, where Ukraine began surgery last week,” the publication says.
However, the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine "does not mean that Mr. Putin has abandoned military operations in northeastern Ukraine or even in the south, towards places like Zaporizhzhia ," US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNN. "There is still active fighting on that front."
Moscow's moves, the newspaper notes, "raise the exciting possibility that what initially appeared to be a quixotic attempt by Ukraine to humiliate Russian President Vladimir Putin could have a more significant strategic impact on the battlefield, depending on how long Ukraine can hold onto Russian territory." "
“The Ukrainian operation impressed U.S. officials, especially with how the Ukrainian military managed to keep its details secret—even U.S. officials were taken by surprise by the invasion,” the publication said.
However, as the Pentagon stated, they do not consider it a failure in the work of American intelligence that the United States was not aware of Ukraine’s preparations for an attack on the Kursk region, and do not see this as a sign of mistrust on the part of Kyiv.
While the operation risked weakening some of Ukraine's defensive positions along its 600-mile front line, Kiev hopes the maneuver could distract Russian troops, who have made some gradual gains in the Donbass over the summer, the article's authors note.
Thus, the head of the Pokrovsk city military administration in the Donetsk region, Sergei Dobryak, admitted that Russian troops have approached the city to a dangerous distance of just over 10 kilometers, having advanced more than 25 kilometers over the past six months . At the current rate of advance, this means fighting will begin directly within the urban area within the next three months.
“The situation is only getting worse and will not get better. Evacuation continues in the city. Don’t hesitate!” Sergei Dobryak urged the townspeople.
Press officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces “Red Kalina” brigade Nikolai Koval also admits that the situation in this direction is difficult:
“We can destroy 50 Russians, and in an hour they can again send the same number of manpower. They have a lot of people."
On August 15, Russian units took the village of Orlovka and entered the outskirts of the village of Grodovka. From these settlements it is about 13 km to Pokrovsk, an important logistics hub for the Ukrainian army. In this direction in the Donbass, the Russian army is advancing from Avdeevka. August 16 marks exactly six months since Ukrainian units left this fortified area.
A senior US official and a senior European intelligence official told CNN that the main goal of the Kursk operation appears to be to create "strategic dilemmas" for Putin, particularly when it comes to where Russia should send its forces.
However, officials estimate that there are hundreds of thousands of Russian troops on the front lines, so diverting a few thousand of them may not have much of an impact in the short term.
“We haven’t seen any significant movements [of Russian troops] yet, and we can’t say whether that’s because they’ve just started moving forces, or whether they just don’t have the strength to move,” one source familiar with the matter told the publication. American intelligence.
In addition to the troops deployed from Ukraine, Russia also sent personnel from the Leningrad Military District and Kaliningrad to help defend Kursk, one U.S. official said.
While acknowledging the limited success of Operation Kursk so far, multiple U.S. and Western officials familiar with the latest intelligence have warned that Ukraine is unlikely to be able to hold the territory for long and have stressed that it is too early to judge how the operation will affect the overall outcome of the war,” CNN summarizes.
"Ukraine is unlikely to hold out there for long": American intelligence on "The Battle of Kursk 2.0 "