Russian logistics in the face of the Kursk offensive
On August 6, Ukraine surprised the Russians by invading the Kursk region. More than two weeks later, as the country celebrates Independence Day and marks two and a half years of war with Russia, its troops have still not been expelled. Instead, it has come to blows A full-blown military operation, according to analysts consulted.
However, senior defense analyst think tank Rand, Marta Keppe, Warning that it was still too early to determine what outcome Kiev hoped to achieve in Kursk, it had “sent a powerful message to the people of Ukraine and its supporters in the West that its army not only continues to fight, but that it can and will attack Russia’s territory”. This is not beyond your abilities.,
Although the Kremlin announced an “anti-terrorist operation” in the oblast on August 9, the reality is that this attack bears little resemblance to previous attacks by pro-Ukrainian paramilitary forces. Kursk is now a war zone and one of the reasons it highlights Moscow’s inability to protect its rear Logistics,
Without moving forward, in the first days of the invasion, Ukraine captured railway junctions that were essential for Russian resupply. A series of maneuvers that took advantage of the dependence on railway lines to overcome the Eurasian giant’s alleged numerical advantage.
As the aggression escalated, “Ukraine Three options for the future: treat the operation as a raid and retreat when Russian forces can counterattack; secure the territory gained as a currency; or continue the offensive to achieve a broader operational objective, such as increasing the number of prisoners taken,” says former US colonel and professor of military history at Ohio State University, Peter Mansoor,
Ukraine has launched this operation after months of stagnation on the front, with Russia making some progress in Donetsk. This is the other side of the conflict: unable to develop a war of position like its Ukrainian counterpart, Moscow has opted for Forced wearingEven if it means sacrificing territory in other areas.
Shortages of Russian supplies
Before the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian logistics were in a phase of transformation that faced Great challenges. Its principles were established in 2008 New lookA set of military reforms that sought to modernize the previous Soviet system.
Some of its initiatives were based on strategic dynamism, determining replenishment according to forecasts and not according to needs (strategy). push) and rely on the military industry to meet the needs at the front. All these decisions inquiries have been made Both before and after the Ukrainian action at Kursk.
in support of the Strategic mobilityRussia ended Soviet-type mass mobilization to make way for a new army centered on better-prepared but smaller combat brigades. This design primarily assumed that the ability to detect and attack targets at greater distances would make large numbers of troops vulnerable, forcing the development of a more fragmented theater of operations.
Despite this, needs at the front forced Russia to mobilise a mass army, consisting of troops without adequate preparation or equipment, and thrown into a warlike “meat grinder”.
This, along with The distribution model is based on push, This caused logistical units to be resupplied according to past estimates and without taking into account the real needs of the front. Something that, in the face of attacks in sectors such as Kursk, until then devoid of confrontation, caused its troops to not have adequate supplies.
“While the tooth-to-tail ratio (the amount of personnel needed to supply each soldier in combat) in the US Army is one soldier for every three-four support, the Russians have the ratio the other way around: For every four or five units in battle, there is only one support unit“, says doctor and logistics expert in military history and strategic studies Ronald T.
In the Russian faith Supply Industry The lack of a store of resources to rely on for manufacturing also became one of the drawbacks of its logistics. The escalation of the conflict and the catastrophic loss of equipment showed the productive inability to meet demands.
“Russia still follows this Internal defense paradigm: If you compare Russian and American combined arms battalions, in terms of equipment recovery personnel, there are four to eight for the Americans compared to 11 for the Russians,” explains TI. “That means they don’t recover equipment at the front, but in the back” he adds.
Thus, Repair of obsolete weapons equipment The Russian army has gone from the exception to the norm.
20th Century Logistics for 21st Century Warfare
Russian armies are inextricably linked with the railway, From the factory to the front, and from there to the rest of the logistics routes. On this basis, it is enough to look at the positions Ukraine has occupied in Kursk to understand how it has limited Moscow’s ability to maintain that region at the level of equipment and personnel.
Railway map of Kursk Oblast; thin black lines represent single track sections, while thicker lines represent double track sections. University of Michigan/Pavel Kashin
On the second day of the offensive, the capture of Sudza in the south split the railway line between Lgov and Kharkiv in two, and the destruction of several bridges over the Seim River on 16, 18 and 19 August did the same to the southwest along the Lgov-Korenevo junction. As a result, the cities of Rylsk and Glushkovo were isolated.
Satellite image of a pontoon bridge over the Seim River (51°22’34.1″N 34°36’43.7″E) before it was destroyed by Ukrainian bombing near Glushkovo, Kursk (August 17, 2024) 2024 Planet Labs Inc.
In addition, as Ukraine expands its front lines, The range of its drones and missiles is also the sameWhich has exposed Russian land convoys carrying supplies by road.
“When you compare the number of trucks in Russian mechanical and technical brigades to American ones, it The number of vehicles is half of thatwhich shows that they lack sufficient land resources to meet their logistics needs,” says Ti.
All this despite the fact that Russian transport will have to endure Three times more artillery than the US, the tools it needs to carry out its “Grozny Doctrine”.
View of a column of Russian army trucks destroyed by Ukrainian shelling on the road in the Sudzhansky district of the Kursk region (August 9, 2024) Anatoly Zhdanov
“The war in Ukraine has shown that it has become more difficult to hide logistics supply lines, which means There is a need for more flexible modes of transport and logistics infrastructureas well as their improved security,” says Kepe.
Donetsk: fight fire with fire
Two weeks after the start of the Ukrainian offensive on Kursk, Russian forces continue to give ground while keeping a pulse in Donetsk, a decision that reflects Moscow’s priority in maintaining progress in eastern Ukraine, even as its enemy enters its homeland.
“The Russian military was apparently taken by surprise, believing that operations would be limited to the existing front in southern Ukraine,” Mansour explains. “Putin and his generals are now calculating their response. They will not stop their offensive in Donbass to deal with Ukrainian infiltration,” he explained.
Ukraine has not disclosed its objectives with this operation, although President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has They deny that they want to occupy the territories. For now, the Kremlin has set October 1 as the deadline to get Ukraine out of Kursk, which appears to confirm the recovery of the oblast as a secondary objective. They are also planning to hold elections for the governor of the region and this is scheduled for September.
Similarly, Moscow has limited itself to creating three new groups of units for Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk and whose tasks, according to the Defense Ministry, will not include offensive operations. These will be mainly limited to Defending the airspace against drones,
Thus, if at the beginning of the year Russian advances were mainly directed towards Chasiv Yar (Kharkov), Moscow has begun to concentrate its efforts on the western side of the city of Donetsk by capturing Pokrovsk. Despite this, and unlike Ukraine in Kursk, Russia pursues limited territorial objectives, something that in any case has not forced the transfer of Ukrainian units from other fronts to reinforce its lines.
A drone view shows what the Ukrainian 68th Separate Jaeger Brigade says are multiple attacks on Russian troops in Novozylenye, the Avdeevka salient, near Donetsk (August 21, 2024) 68th Separate Jaeger Brigade “Oleksiy Dovbusha”
Since the capture of Avdiivka, Russia’s advance attacks have allowed it to advance barely 23 kilometers in the past six months. In the 15 days of the aggression, UCrania penetrated 30 kilometers into Kursk and captured more than 90 locations. And, despite this, Russia has not abandoned its aim to consolidate its territorial gains in the Donbas, even if it has to suffer large losses in personnel and equipment.
“What happened in Kursk tells Putin Should put in more effort and maximize your promotional value In Donetsk, it is important to manipulate the population and deliver the right messages to continue signaling strength and determination,” TI stressed.
Faced with a static front that was trying to weaken Kiev, Ukraine has chosen the element of surprise to achieve significant results. “The Kursk operation has embarrassed Putin and erased the alleged red line that the war would not reach Russian soil, hence the results (Ukraine) has achieved in the political sphere much more than the army”Mansoor says.