Day 1083
On 9 February, there is a lot of big news coming from the Kursk direction.
Ukrainians are overrunning Russian soldiers as they launched a massive surprise assault in the Kursk salient, catching Russian forces completely off guard. The Ukrainians achieved a massive breakthrough through a coordinated mechanized assault, penetrating over 4 km deep into Russian lines after Russians suffered heavy losses in their recent failed attacks on the Ukrainian salient.
Ukrainians decided to press their advantage and take Russian forces by complete surprise in a sudden assault southeast of Sudzha. Ukrainians started by covertly accumulating their forces in Sudzha, planning to use the hardened roads leading out of the settlement for a lightning assault through Russian lines near Cherkasskoya Konopelka.
Ukrainians initiated the operation with an intense artillery barrage to suppress Russian positions on the frontline, while FPV kamikaze drones precisely eliminated dangerous Russian firing positions along the planned avenue of attack. Shortly after the last shells landed, Ukrainians initiated their first ground assault with a massive mechanized column, overrunning Russian positions and advancing along the key hardened roads.
With the preliminary Russian positions taken out of the equation by Ukrainian shelling and drone strikes, Ukrainian forces quickly reached Cherkasskaya Konopelka and Fanaseevka, dismounting their infantry in the settlements and surrounding forest. After establishing their positions, the southern flank was secured, allowing Ukrainians to launch another three waves of mechanized forces to reinforce these positions and advance further toward Ulano, starting intense clashes with the Russian Garrison in the settlement. Russian sources reported that Ukrainians used nearly a full mechanized Battalion during their assaults, with up to 400 soldiers and 30 to 50 various armored vehicles.
Footage from the area shows how Russians quickly scramble to counter the threat, trying to eliminate the leading Ukrainian mine-clearing vehicle. However, Ukrainian electronic warfare equipment did not allow Russians to launch swarms of drones to counter the Ukrainian advance. This limited the Russian forces to only use a scarce number of fiber-optic FPV drones, which are immune to electronic warfare as they do not require any radio signals to be controlled. However, their low numbers cost only minimal casualties to the Ukrainian assault group.
Additional footage from Chechen Akhmat special forces shows how Russians had not prepared any defensive positions like foxholes or trenches in this area, forcing them to lay prone in the forest while Ukrainian kamikaze drones conducted precision strikes on their forces. Further footage from Russian fiber-optic reconnaissance drones shows a Ukrainian MRAP landing an assault group in the forest near Ulanok, ready to take over control of the town.
The main goal of the Ukrainian counterattacks was to take the settlement of Ulanok and increase the buffer zone between Sudzha and Russian frontline positions. Sudzha is the most crucial town in the Ukrainian salient in Kursk, where all their logistics and reinforcements flow through. With Russians having shown to be incapable of rapid advances or maneuver warfare against prepared Ukrainian defenses, Ukrainians are trying to force the Russians to conduct costly week-long grinding battles in an effort to retake the ground that the Ukrainians had taken in just a single day.
By advancing to the Psel River in the south, Ukrainians are also attempting to cut off the Russian forces to the south of Sudzha from direct reinforcements. Any further advance in this area would also allow Ukrainians to establish a robust line of defense along the Psel River while concentrating their fire on the open fields and forests to the east.
Overall, Ukrainian forces successfully overwhelmed preliminary Russian positions south of Makhnovka and exploited this success to achieve a 4-and-a-half-kilometer-deep breakthrough south of Sudhza. With Ukrainians successfully landing and consolidating their newly gained positions, the remaining Russian forces south of Sudzha were effectively cut off from their ground lines of communication, forcing further reinforcements to cross the Psel River in rubber boats. Most importantly, Ukrainians have once again demonstrated their ability to reintroduce maneuver warfare under the correct circumstances and make significant gains in one day that will take the Russians weeks of costly grinding battles to retake. With the Russian failure to contain the Ukrainian advance, the Russian high command has decided to immediately dismiss the commander of the 11th VDV Airborne Brigade, Pavel Filyatev, for failure to properly defend his area of responsibility.
In our daily frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
