Day 1013
On 2 December, there are a number of updates from the Kursk path.
Here, in a determined try and penetrate the Ukrainian salient from the west, the Russians have dedicated their complete arsenal of armored autos to the battle. However, the devastating losses inflicted by Ukraine’s layered defenses appear to have exhausted their reserves of armor in Kursk, leaving them with no choices aside from to resort to pure infantry assaults on foot with much more catastrophic outcomes.
The principal Russian objective right here is to create a foothold on the east facet of the Snagost River, seize the settlements alongside the financial institution, and collapse the Ukrainian protection to chop off provides to Ukrainian forces to the north. All Russian assaults to this second have failed because of the pure barrier within the type of the river and the sturdy Ukrainian positions on elevated factors on the opposite facet.
This has prompted the Russians to vary their method and throw all their efforts to interrupt by from the north round Tolstyi Lug. If they set up a agency presence within the space, they are going to obtain not solely their principal objective however will even be capable of improve the direct assaults towards Novoivanovka to the east the place they’ve failed miserably within the earlier weeks.
The preliminary Russian assault concerned a number of armored personnel carriers trying to bypass a big native water reservoir and advance southward. However, the repeated use of this route in prior assaults on Novoivanovka had led Ukrainian forces to take care of fixed surveillance of the realm with drones outfitted with thermal imaging.
Once the Russian autos have been detected, Ukrainian forces swiftly engaged them with Javelin anti-tank missiles, obliterating the convoy on the spot. The surviving troops sought refuge within the tree line close to the water however have been shortly neutralized by precision strikes from FPV drones.
This preliminary Russian try geared toward finding the Ukrainian hearth positions and checking how shortly they might reply. It was instantly adopted by a number of massive waves of not less than 6 to 10 armored autos every, together with a number of kinds of tanks, infantry combating autos, and bigger numbers of infantry.
The principal Russian thought was to overwhelm the defenders and penetrate their line with brute drive, prompting them to retreat additional east.
The Ukrainians had anticipated such strikes and extensively mined massive sections of the encompassing fields. This compelled the attackers to aim a breakthrough alongside their former defensive positions, initially designed to guard the worldwide border.
Geolocated footage revealed the dire penalties: some Russian autos grew to become immobilized on anti-tank dragon’s tooth, making them simple targets for Ukrainian forces, whereas others have been caught within the open and swiftly destroyed by a mixture of Javelin missiles, artillery strikes, and FPV drone assaults. Wave after wave of Russian mechanized assaults led to flames, with troopers of the Ukrainian 225th Assault Battalion and the thirty sixth Marine Brigade publishing a number of movies highlighting the devastating outcomes of the two-day-long Russian operation.
The pictures present fields cluttered with burning remnants of Russian tanks and armored autos, scattered alongside an enormous space between Tolstyi Lug, Zelenyi Shlyakh, and Nizhnii Klin, turning it right into a graveyard of tanks and different armored autos. One Ukrainian fighter from the twenty fourth Assault Battalion confirmed that Russians switched to pure infantry assaults now, which signifies that the Russian models misplaced a lot armor so shortly that they ran out of reserves within the warehouses in Kursk.
Overall, the relentless Russian makes an attempt to interrupt by the Ukrainian defenses round Tolstyi Lug have resulted in catastrophic losses, each in personnel and tools. Despite shifting ways and exhausting assets, they’ve been unable to beat the well-prepared Ukrainian positions, underscoring the ineffectiveness of their marketing campaign on this area regardless of Putin’s orders and deadlines.
In our each day frontline report, we pair up with the navy blogger Reporting from Ukraine to maintain you knowledgeable about what is going on on the battlefield within the Russo-Ukrainian warfare.
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