Ukrainian drone tactics make their way to Kursk region, Russian military bloggers suggest
Kyiv has said little about its rapid entry into Russia’s Kursk region, only confirming involvement on Saturday.
It seemingly caught Moscow by surprise: In just days, Ukrainian forces have gained control of what army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has claimed to total 1,000 square kilometres of Russian soil, as of Monday.
How did it happen? While Kyiv has not elaborated, across the border in Russia, military commentators have been rumbling that Ukrainian forces skilfully used drones and jammers to limit Russia’s defences and break into Kursk.
Some outside observers say this view seems to make sense, while cautioning that those same commentators may only be able to see a slice of the wider picture.
“It does seem plausible,” said Samuel Bendett, an adviser with the Russia Studies program at CNA, a safety and security think-tank in Washington, D.C.
Soaring drone use
Drones have become increasingly critical to both Russia and Ukraine across nearly 30 months of all-out war in Ukraine. They are used everywhere — from the trenches of the front line, to the skies above interior areas of the two countries.
Ukraine, which has created a drone warfare-focused branch of its military, has used drones to destroy Russian tanks, hit warplanes and other military targets, in addition to using longer-range drone models to strike oil and gas facilities far beyond the border.
And it’s likewise felt the sting of Russian drones that have killed Ukrainian soldiers and civilians alike, and have damaged infrastructure including power plants.
For Ukraine, relying on technologies like drones has been a way for it to punch above its weight in its fight with Russia.
“We have everything to win the war against the Russian Federation. Everything to replace a person in the trench, at sea, in the air and underwater,” said Ivan Havryliuk, a deputy defence minister, in remarks reported by ABC News earlier this year.
Ukrainian forces heading into Russia’s Kursk region drove through a border checkpoint in Ukraine’s Sumy region on Tuesday. The crossing, which was previously under Russian control, was recently recaptured by Ukraine.
Along the front line, troops from both sides are constrained by the hovering threat of the drones above. Small, first-person view (FPV) drones are routinely used to hunt individual soldiers.
Yet these same obstacles did not stop Ukraine from advancing into Kursk, raising the question of how.
A handful of published reports — some citing the observations of Russian war bloggers — suggests that Ukraine used drones and signal-jamming devices to down Russian surveillance capabilities and then attack the ground ahead, as Ukraine’s own troops made their advance.
Bendett said it’s not a surprise that Ukraine would be using such approaches. He, along with others, saw other factors beyond drones as being key to Kyiv’s early success in Kursk, such as operational secrecy and the element of surprise. However, he said, the technology is something that Ukraine has been developing, testing and ultimately competing with Russia on.
“We know Ukraine are ahead of Russia, when it comes to developing [these] tactics and techniques,” he said.
Journalist David Axe, who has been covering the conflict, sees Ukraine putting a new spin on an old method in Kursk.
“It’s a creeping barrage of jammers and drones,” Axe wrote in his newsletter Trench Art.
That’s not to say Russia has not been fighting back: A report from The Economist quotes Ukrainian soldiers describing “a demonic buzz” in the skies above Kursk, as both Russian planes and drones soared above them.
Knowing when and where to strike
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker, said that some details have been leaking to the media since the Kursk offensive got underway last week.
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While not privy to operational details himself, Goncharenko says it’s clear the military action was carefully planned.
“I understand that you need to attack places where you wouldn’t expect it,” he told CBC News in an emailed statement. “That’s what the Ukrainian Armed Forces did. If we used new tactics and new technologies, that’s definitely a plus.”
Several observers who spoke to CBC News noted that the part of the border where Ukraine launched its offensive was not well defended.
“They weren’t the most high-quality units,” said John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a U.S. think-tank.
Add in the fact that the incursion may not have been expected — though a New York Times report suggests Russian military leaders didn’t act on a warning about a potential attack — and you can see how the wheels could be set in motion for a successful result.
“[Ukraine] achieved a significant element of surprise in the early days of the offensive,” said Hardie, who predicted that Russia’s defensive efforts “will become more coherent” in the days ahead.
Bigger questions beyond Kursk
Would Ukraine’s approach have worked as well in an area where Russia had more experienced troops? That’s an open question, said CNA’s Bendett.
And whether it can happen again will depend on Russia’s ability to come up with counter-measures against the tactics used in Kursk, he said.
Nick Reynolds, a research fellow in land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in the U.K., is skeptical of the significance of drones and electronic warfare to the events in Kursk.
He said via email that it’s unclear how much planning was needed for the Kursk offensive, and also to what degree Ukraine has been able to integrate its drone-and-jamming tactics with planned manoeuvres.
It also remains to be seen if Ukraine can repeat “the same effects when they are not conducting a meticulously pre-planned operation.”
Published at Wed, 14 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000
Ukraine pounds Russia with drones and says it is advancing deeper
Ukraine pounded Russian regions with missiles and drones on Wednesday as Kyiv said it was advancing deeper in the biggest foreign incursion into Russia for decades, which the White House said posed a “real dilemma” for President Vladimir Putin.
Thousands of Ukrainian troops rammed through the Russian border in the early hours of Aug. 6 into the Western Kursk region, in what Putin said was a major provocation aimed at gaining a stronger hand in possible future ceasefire talks.
In an embarrassment for Russia, Ukraine carved out a slice of Kursk, and though Putin said the army would push out the Ukrainian troops, intense battles have so far failed to expel them.
Russia said on Wednesday that it had destroyed 117 Ukrainian drones in Russia overnight, mostly in the Kursk, Voronezh and Belgorod and Nizhny Novgorod regions. It said missiles had also been shot down and showed Sukhoi Su-34 bombers pounding Ukrainian positions in Kursk.
Officials say 11,000 people have fled Russia’s Kursk region after Ukraine gained control of roughly 28 villages. It’s the first occupation of Russia since the Second World War and could start to change the public perception of the war in that country.
Russian commanders had said that the front in Kursk had stabilized, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces were continuing to advance there and ordered his generals to develop the next “key steps” in the operation.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s border region of Belgorod, declared a region-wide state of emergency on Wednesday, citing continued attacks by Ukrainian forces.
“The situation in the Belgorod region continues to be extremely difficult and tense,” Gladkov said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app.
Daily shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces had destroyed houses, killing and wounding civilians, he added.
Energy grid attacks in Ukraine
Meanwhile, within Ukraine, the military shot down 17 out of 23 Russia-launched drones during an overnight attack, the country’s air force and local authorities said on Wednesday.
Russian forces also launched two Kh-59/69 guided missiles to attack Ukraine, the air force said.
Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo said Russian drones had hit an energy facility overnight and caused temporary power cuts to consumers in parts of Chernihiv region.
WATCH l The theories as to why Ukraine launched a ground attack in Russia:
For the first time since the Russian invasion, Ukraine has launched a major incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Andrew Chang explores three theories about the strategy behind carrying out the attack during a manpower crisis — and what it stands to gain.
In the morning, Russian forces also attacked an energy facility in the southern region, Ukrenergo said, without offering details.
Russia renewed a campaign of aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities this spring. Kyiv says the attacks have knocked out half of its power-generating capacity, forcing it to introduce rolling blackouts.
Russia says energy infrastructure is a legitimate military target and denies targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure.
The overnight attack also damaged infrastructure in the northern region of Zhytomyr with no casualties reported, according to local authorities.
The air force shot down one drone in the southern region of Mykolaiv, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said. The debris damaged two private residences with no casualties reported, he added.
Kyiv Gov. Ruslan Kravchenko said the debris from an attack caused a forest fire that has since been put out.
Risks for Ukraine
The Ukrainian attack on Russia, the biggest by a foreign force since the Second World War, has dramatically changed the narrative around the war. Russia had been advancing since the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive to make any major gains against Moscow’s forces.
The offensive brings risks for Kyiv: Ukraine may leave other parts of the front exposed by dedicating forces to fighting in Russian sovereign territory. Russia controls 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory and has been advancing in recent months.
Ukraine has claimed it controls at least 1,000 square kilometres of Russia, more than double what Moscow’s figures indicate. Reuters was not able to independently verify the battlefield situation.
Russian officials say Ukraine is trying to show its Western backers that it can still muster major military operations just as pressure mounts on both Kyiv and Moscow to agree to talks about halting the war. Putin said this week that Ukraine “with the help of its Western masters” was aiming to improve Kyiv’s negotiating position ahead of possible peace talks and to slow the advance of Russian forces.
By bringing the war to Russia, Ukraine has forced nearly 200,000 Russians to evacuate border regions.
Published at Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:16:56 +0000