Russia is scrambling to bolster its defenses more than a week after Ukraine struck, a lightning strike across the border in the southern Kursk region.

US officials told CNN that Russia has diverted thousands of troops from occupied territory inside Ukraine to counter the threat. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has had to bring in the conscripts, relying on a promise he made not to use them on the front line.

A large trench has been dug across the village near the town of Selektsionnyi, about 45 kilometers (about 28 miles) from the border, in Kursk.

Experts said Ukraine's bold play to breach Russia's border, planned in complete secrecy, had surprised even Kiev's closest allies, including the United States, changing the playing field of a more than two-year-old war.

But after months on foot, losing ground in heavy battles on their territory, how could the Ukrainians catch Moscow by surprise and break into the Russian homeland?

First: excellent operational safety. Nothing about the operation revealed. Based on ground videos and satellite images of their progress, the troop movements almost looked like a drill or a defensive reinforcement.

"Ukraine has demonstrated that they can successfully carry out such a covert and significant operation, they can penetrate Russian territory so this is no longer a red line and they ... are still very committed to fighting for their country, that there is no such thing as war fatigue, and they are willing to take these, in some ways, extreme measures for the sake of defending their country," said Natia Seskuria, a fellow at the Royal Institute of United Kingdom Services for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI).

The force was built under the cover of thick summer leaves along the rural roads of the Sumy region, in northeastern Ukraine. Experienced, battle-hardened units were raised or diverted from other areas. Units such as the 82nd Air Assault Brigade, which until recently had been fighting in the nearby Kharkiv region, were pulled into the mission to breach the border, according to multiple videos and social media accounts.

Among the detailed preparations was accurate intelligence on the readiness and capability of Russian units on the border, as well as the number of obstacles ahead, from minefields to tank traps. There weren't many.

Ukrainian forces also used detailed knowledge of geography to launch the attack, using forest belts for cover and roads for speed. Only in the last days before the beginning of the incursion, the commanders were informed about the mission.

“The key, in terms of Ukraine's success, was that they were able to penetrate Russian territory quite easily with little or no resistance. It was a complete surprise to the Russians and it shows that the Russian intelligence services really failed to foresee any kind of Ukrainian incursion into the region," said Seskuria.

After establishing weak points in the Russian defenses, the first Ukrainian units attacked at Kursk on the afternoon of August 6.

Videos on social media, which were located by CNN, appeared to show dozens of Russian soldiers immediately surrendering at the heavily damaged border crossing southwest of the town of Sudzha, located 105 kilometers (65 miles) southwest of the city of Kursk. .

Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian vlogger who shared the video on his Twitter and Telegram channels, said it showed at least 22 Russian soldiers "surrendered" in the Kursk region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had taken control of Sudzha - the first official confirmation that troops, who have been in the town since last Wednesday, had captured it.

The city is an important transit point for gas supplies from Russia to Europe via Ukraine. Satellite images showed a gas terminal at a nearby border crossing in ruins.

In their charge across the border, the Ukrainians have used fast, resilient Western-made armored vehicles: Strykers and Marders. Small mobile groups of special forces were quickly deployed to dozens of locations as the Russian military tried to assess the force of the attack.

The key to their success: air defense and supporting artillery, as well as jamming to prevent Russian military communications. Thermal protection for their armor helped soldiers avoid heat-detecting drones.

Within hours of crossing the border, the Ukrainians were close to Sudzha. Many of the residents tried to escape, some cursing the Russian army for abandoning them.

As the operation unfolded, Ukrainian soldiers posted videos of themselves in front of village billboards before disappearing, part of a parallel campaign of psychological warfare.

CNN found multiple videos showing Ukrainian forces posing in front of road signs and removing Russian flags in village halls across the Kursk region, including Porozovsky, Plekhovo, Sverdlikovo, Guyevo and Sudzha.

"I think this has a great value in terms of information warfare, because these images, videos that we see ... are a really good morale boost for Ukrainians," Seskuria said.

Instead of engaging the Russian units, the advanced Ukrainian units bypassed them, cutting them off. The Russian military command tried to keep pace with where the threat was coming from.

At the same time, the Ukrainians trained their attention on Russian reinforcements, wiping out a convoy of 14 Russian military vehicles near Rylsk with a missile attack. Video shared on social media, which CNN posted in the village of Oktyabr'skoe in the Kursk region, showed the dead bodies of Russian soldiers in wrecked and burning trucks along part of the road.

The head of Ukraine's armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Thursday that Ukrainian forces had captured 1,150 square kilometers (about 444 square miles) of territory and 82 settlements since the start of the surprise incursion.

More than a week after the incursion began, the Ukrainians were still probing for weakness, consolidating their grip on a strip of territory 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) deep — even offering Russian civilians emergency food aid.

Seskuria told CNN that Ukraine's incursion is partly a "self-defense measure ... because the Kursk region, because of its location, has been used many times to launch missiles into Ukrainian territory."

"Ukraine's strategic goal would be to divert Russian forces from offensive operations in the Donetsk region, where the Russians have made some advances in recent months ... that would be a clear goal, to ease military pressure on Ukraine."

Seskuria added that Ukraine's recent activity could provide Ukraine "a better negotiating position when it comes to any kind of peace talks in the future." Indeed, Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Zelensky, said the incursion was aimed at persuading Russia to enter a "fair negotiation process".

Russian military bloggers are apoplectic about the lack of preparedness and slow response to the incursion.

The Russian Defense Ministry insisted this week that it was pushing back Ukrainian advances and taking prisoners, but Russian reinforcements were trying to retake the ground, maneuvering and firing missiles and artillery.

Can Kasapoğlu, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank, said he did not foresee a Ukrainian withdrawal anytime soon.

"The offensive is reaching its peak, and the battlefield is stabilizing. However, the Ukrainian military has already provided operational depth. If they can establish strong defensive positions ... they can stay inside Russian territory for a long time," he said.

Kursk would be Ukraine's "crown jewel" when negotiating an end to the conflict, Kasapoğlu added, if Kiev manages to keep the occupied territory.

 

(AA/BalkanWeb)