Dawn
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Russia is scrambling to shore up its defenses more than a week into Ukraine’s shock, lightening attack across the border on 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 conscripts, backpeddling on a promise he made not to use them on the frontline.
A sizeable trench has been dug across countryside near the town of Selektsionnyi, around 45 kilometers (about 28 miles) from the border, in Kursk, satellite imagery showed. Online job adverts for trench diggers have emerged. “Payment every week,” promised one.
Experts told CNN that Ukraine’s bold gambit to breach Russia’s border, planned in complete secrecy, had stunned even Kyiv’s closest allies, including the United States, shifting the playing field of a more than two-year-old war.
But after months on the backfoot, losing ground in grinding battles in their own territory, just how were the Ukrainians able to catch Moscow by surprise and penetrate the Russian homeland?
First: superb operational security. Nothing about the operation leaked. Based on videos from the ground and satellite imagery of their advance, the troop movements almost seemed like an exercise or a defensive reinforcement.
“[Ukraine has] demonstrated that they can pull off such a secretive and significant operation successfully, they can penetrate Russian territory so this is no longer the red line, and they … are still very much committed to fight for their country, that there is no such thing as war fatigue, and they’re willing to take these, in a way, extreme measures for the sake of defending their country,” Natia Seskuria, an associate fellow at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI), told CNN.
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 conscripts, backpeddling on a promise he made not to use them on the frontline.
A sizeable trench has been dug across countryside near the town of Selektsionnyi, around 45 kilometers (about 28 miles) from the border, in Kursk, satellite imagery showed. Online job adverts for trench diggers have emerged. “Payment every week,” promised one.
Experts told CNN that Ukraine’s bold gambit to breach Russia’s border, planned in complete secrecy, had stunned even Kyiv’s closest allies, including the United States, shifting the playing field of a more than two-year-old war.
But after months on the backfoot, losing ground in grinding battles in their own territory, just how were the Ukrainians able to catch Moscow by surprise and penetrate the Russian homeland?
First: superb operational security. Nothing about the operation leaked. Based on videos from the ground and satellite imagery of their advance, the troop movements almost seemed like an exercise or a defensive reinforcement.
“[Ukraine has] demonstrated that they can pull off such a secretive and significant operation successfully, they can penetrate Russian territory so this is no longer the red line, and they … are still very much committed to fight for their country, that there is no such thing as war fatigue, and they’re willing to take these, in a way, extreme measures for the sake of defending their country,” Natia Seskuria, an associate fellow at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI), told CNN.
