Today, the most interesting developments come from the Kursk direction, Russia.
Here, in defense of their objective, Ukrainians devised a clever plan to turn the tables on the battlefield, using the North Korean numbers advantage against them. As cluster bombs and artillery rained down upon the North Koreans, Ukrainians sent in special forces operators to clear the area of any survivors and take prisoners; but as North Koreans were not willing to surrender, it led to a series of brutal confrontations.
The Main Ukrainian goal is to defend Kruglenkoe, to prevent North Koreans from using the capture of the settlement to penetrate further toward Malaya Loknya, a key settlement holding together the Ukrainian defense of the entire northern part of the Kursk salient.
It is important to note that the main value of Kruglenkoe is not the size of the village, as less than fifty people would’ve lived here before the war. Instead, the main value of Kruglenkoe is the forests surrounding the settlement and, most importantly, the basements of the houses here, which allows for the concealed gathering of forces and ammunition, making it a launching pad for further infiltration assaults through the forests on Malaya Loknya.
As North Koreans had already established a foothold in the forests during the initial stages of their assault, pushing them back out was not a viable option for Ukrainians as the North Koreans vastly outnumbered them.
This meant that to achieve their goal of stopping the North Korean breakthrough to Malaya Loknya, Ukrainians had to conceive a clever plan to turn the North Korean reliance on their numbers advantage into a weakness. The plan was simple, force North Koreans into tactically disadvantageous positions, undermine their combat capabilities, and conduct counterattacks to eliminate the remaining forces and gather reconnaissance.
As you remember from a previous report, Ukrainians already completed the first phase of the operation, conducting a tactical withdrawal from the narrow forests leading to Kruglenkoe. As North Koreans were initially spread out across the bigger forest to the west, North Koreans were now forced to concentrate their forests along a narrow corridor, allowing Ukrainians to eliminate the threat most effectively with HIMARS cluster bombs.
Newly released footage shows how the North Korean forces tried to deploy fresh troops to the forests to try and attack the village nonetheless. The footage shows a huge column of North Korean soldiers making their way through the forest, trusting that the trees would obscure them.
Unfortunately for North Koreans, Ukrainians were heavily monitoring the area with drones, as their heat signatures were highly visible in contrast to the snowy and cold underground. Ukrainian artillerymen immediately opened fire on the bunched-up North Koreans, decimating the entire assault group with a mix of conventional artillery and cluster rounds.
After the large majority of North Korean soldiers were wiped out by artillery, Ukrainians sent in special forces operators to conduct raids on the North Korean positions and clear the area, preventing them from gradually building up a sizeable assault force from the remnants of failed attacks. The Ukrainian special forces tactfully moved through the forest, clearing dugouts with grenades and finishing off any soldier unwilling to surrender.
As it turns out, reports from Ukrainian soldiers who have fought against the North Koreans report that their enemy often refuses to surrender, even in cases where they have no other way out. One soldier comments on how they were forced to shoot a North Korean who was faking a surrender, as he tried to pull the pin on a grenade on them once they came close to take him captive.
Overall, Ukrainians have conceived a plan to deal with the new North Korean threat most effectively, turning the North Korean reliance on overwhelming attacks through their superiority in numbers, into a stark disadvantage. By putting North Korean forces in a tactically disadvantageous position and destroying their forces accumulations in bulk, Ukrainians managed to break the forward momentum of their attacks, and launch a series of successful counterattacks.
As North Koreans actively continue to funnel more troops into the forests, it is expected that Ukrainians will need to rinse and repeat their operation, till they have either completely drained the North Koreans of their reserves, or have forced the North Koreans to pull back for reorganization, creating a win-win scenario in both cases.
In our regular 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.
