The Deeper Battle of Kursk
The Deeper Battle of Kursk
An update on some themes
Sunday night, the animated map below appeared on the X app. I cannot verify the authenticity of the cartography. No two geolocation experts can agree right now on exactly where in Kursk Oblast the Ukrainians are, or what they control. Rather than slow down, as many prognosticators suggested was the case on Sunday morning, by Monday morning it was clear that Russian units were being routed along the major axes of Ukrainian attack, and that the area of Ukrainian control had more than doubled in size. Here is what I published about the first week of the Kursk offensive on Sunday:
Building on my analysis of the Ukrainian electronic warfare performance so far, this writer humbly submits that the present fog of war is in no small way an intentional product of Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi’s adapted and upgraded Soviet deep battle doctrine. Forget your daydreams of Ukrainian forces conducting NATO-style combined arms. I assess that Syrskyi is doing what he knows, with an army that already knows exactly what to do, using new technologies to conduct a more familiar mode of warfare. Syrskyi has chosen the ‘easy button.’ It seems to be working.
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Let us begin with the weakest evidence: a video purporting to show Russian anti-Putin resistance partisans in the Kursk region telling the Russian Army “you are not welcome here.” So far, however, Ukrainian-American Igor Sushko is the only source to put out this video, and no one has been able to confirm the real existence of the “Resistance of the Kursk Region” beyond a website URL.
Two statements are noteworthy in the brief video, shot at night using a road sign for the town of Sudzha as a whiteboard to share the URL in red magic marker. “You came here from your warm peaceful homes and fight here for money because you don’t want to nor are capable of doing anything at home!” says a masked man who may or may not be a real Russian.
Then: “We also want to thank our friends from the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces for the provision of weapons and supplies which we use for the intended purpose.” This is Ukrainian propaganda, and it is being done right, if we are to judge from its effects on Russian propagandists.
As implied by the term militants, and the ‘party’ in partisan, these irregular forces serve political ends. Partisans have been an important component of deep battle doctrines going back decades in Russian military thought. During the Cold War, for example, Soviet planners pre-positioned enormous caches of obsolete artillery in anticipation of a future invasion by western armies. I recently reposted an essay about that.
Civilians by nature, partisans are not really equipped to engage in pitched battles. ‘Resistance fighters’ will not last long unless they pick their fights carefully. In his 2008 monograph The Fundamentals of Partisan Warfare, Spetznaz LTC Oleg Ryazanov was more realistic when he called for the “urban” partisan fighter to have “strictly defined objectives, limited in scope” such as “the elimination of government officials, military, police, and propagandists of the ruling regime; expropriations; sabotage and diversions; providing protection for acts of civil disobedience; and intelligence.”
Potentially, Ukraine is recruiting Russians for extremely dangerous, yet essential, work that prepares a deep battlefield for exploitation. As long as the Ukrainians are seen to be winning, some number of Russians is bound to cooperate with them. Any humanitarian relief that Ukrainians provide to residents of territory they occupy further incentivizes cooperation. Regardless of its origin, the partisan recruiting video serves the end of convincing Russians that Ukraine means to occupy Kursk as long as it takes.
“One should not expect a quick victory in Kursk province,” Russian senator Andrey Guryev has said on Telegram. Russian expatriate Konstantin Samoilov, who may or many not be the entire reason why YouTube has been blocked in Russia, showed Guryev tampering expectations of liberation in his livestream yesterday. I have set the clip to play at that point.
“It’s an invasion,” Guryev said. “It’s not some terrorist groups. The forces and resources are quite serious, these are regular combat units that entered the territory of the Kursk province.” As the Ukrainians likely expected would happen, the Kremlin has responded to the situation by declaring an “anti-terrorism operation” in Kursk rather than a “special military operation” or an outright war. Russian security forces are designed to quell armed resistance, such as partisans, but they are not equipped or prepared for pitched battles. Couched in the usual reassurances, Guryev acknowledges the Ukrainian force in Kursk is “not terrorists to be quickly kicked out.”
“There are serious fights,” he says. “They’re dragging some pretty serious reinforcements from their territory. They are fighting dynamically, 24 hours a day. Hostilities are continuous, present.” Ukrainian goals remain unclear, but Kursk “is, unfortunately, occupied. And it is what it is.”
Samoilov follows this clip with a Russian senator calling for local males to be armed and trained as territorial defense units “at accelerated pace.”
Some Ukraine-friendly analysts scoff at the idea of a long-term Ukrainian occupation of Kursk Oblast, let alone Belgorod. I won’t name any names. As much as I esteem the informed commentariat on the war, some of the professional voices need to remember that they are not the actual target audience of Ukraine’s informational warfare campaign.
Guryev is the target. Russians are the target. So far, the blows seem to be landing with precision on their intended targets. Consider the possibility that Ukrainians know exactly what they are doing.
Of course, with more than 180,000 residents reportedly fleeing the Kursk region rather than joining a resistance movement, any Russian citizen who stays behind may be subject to greater suspicion from Russian forces as well as less empathy from fellow Russians than before. This is consistent with Red Army behavior in liberated areas during World War II, for example. It is the logic of empire by which the Kremlin will happily drop powerful glide bombs on its own territory with utter disregard for civilian casualties or damage, because destroying Kursk is deemed the only way to save it. Just ask any Syrian community that has resisted the Assad regime and they will explain how Russian imperialism works.
Reports of Russian troops looting Kursk settlements rather than defending Kursk are also indicative of the vacuum of authority that Ukraine is offering to fill, and wants Moscow to see them offering to fill. Specifically, this is the worst nightmare of Vladimir Putin: historical areas that were once Ukraine, where Ukrainian soldiers encounter older people who speak Ukrainian, holding referenda to leave Russia and join Ukraine. Forget the fairy tales about NATO twisting Putin’s arm. This is the boogeyman under his bed that required the annihilation of Ukraine as a country, a people, and an idea in the first place. Syrskyi has read the Russian ruler’s psychology and aimed right at his softest spot.
In this context, the call for resistance fighters is likely more about managing Moscow’s perception of what Ukraine is doing in Kursk than an actual recruiting drive, though it may in time develop into substantial partisan recruitment. The key takeaway here is that any perceived presence, real or imagined, of Ukrainian partisans in Kursk alters the political conditions of Russian response. The terms of the war in Kursk are being set in Kyiv.
To use the Russian term, the call for partisans to join the Ukrainian cause may seem to be maskirovka, or battlefield deception. Like a minor border incursion in Belgorod Oblast, or electronic warfare jammers brought to the border near Sumy, one might conclude that the most likely immediate objective of the “Resistance” video is to confuse Moscow with a variety of inputs, obscuring the real objectives of Ukrainian forces and inspiring paranoia among Russian fighters in Kursk.
Returning to the Igor Sushko video, however, the “thanks” given to Ukrainian Special Operations Forces points to the very real penetration of small “sabotage and reconnaissance” teams into Kursk Oblast. Perhaps one of them even shot the video in the first place. (Who am I kidding? That is almost certainly what happened.) Soviet doctrine called such elements division reconnaissance teams (DRTs). Two men with a radio are enough to ruin an enemy’s day — an old idea, now.
This idea has been updated. According to Russian military bloggers, Ukrainian “ranger” teams are equipped with small UAVs as well as night-fighting devices that most Russian conscripts lack. Operating far ahead of any “lines,” these teams have reportedly been playing havoc with the Russian response to the invasion of Kursk, especially at night, when they enjoy technological superiority.
So even without Russians turning partisan en masse, the Sushko video reflects a tactical reality on the ground that is consistent with deep battle strategy, and therefore suggestive of Gen. Syrskyi’s intentions. In a televised staff meeting Monday, Syrskyi said that Ukrainian forces already occupy 1,000 square kilometers of Russia, including at least 28 settlements. He wants Russia to know what he has. But what does he mean to do with them?
The above information implied that Ukrainian reconnaissance elements were in fact spread over a much larger footprint on the ground, Monday. Videos of Ukrainian armored vehicles moving freely along the roads of Kursk Oblast suggested that the effective area of control was much larger, still. As reinforcements poured into Kursk, the area of occupation, which we might call the Ukrainian bridgehead, expanded into this zone of effective control (sometimes referred to as “fire control”). Today, there are reports of Ukrainian forces fighting even farther beyond the line of occupation, so we can expect the size of the bridgehead to increase again this week.
Aside from mapping, the strongest evidence of deep battle doctrine at work is material resource allocation. Reports of Ukrainian jets operating with impunity in the skies over the Kursk bridgehead indicate that Ukrainians enjoy local air superiority, likely due to air defense systems being placed in advanced positions. Long-range tube and rocket artillery has also been spotted entering Kursk from Ukraine. This concentration of precious ranged-fire assets being put at risk indicates the high priority Syrskyi gives the operation, which appears to be the main effort of Kyiv for 2024. To use the gambler’s phrase, Ukrainians are ‘all in’ on this bet. Multiplying reports of interdicted Russian counterattacks — columns and concentrations struck well short of contact with Ukrainian forces — suggest it is paying off.
At the risk of greatly oversimplifying the history and meaning of the doctrine, the basic idea outlined in the 1933 Provisional Instructions for Organizing the Deep Battle is that by attacking strategic vulnerabilities in Russia, Ukraine can induce catastrophic strategic failures in Russia. Putin’s strategic responses — a counter-terrorism operation led by the FSB, using a scratch army — are exactly the sort of decision cascade that Ukrainians wanted. This is especially true of those poorly-trained, yet highly-prized conscript soldiers. Ukraine definitely wants Moscow to send lots more of them, please.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reports this morning that its forces have taken over 2,000 Russian prisoners in Kursk. Ukrainian society is reportedly jubilant that Russians will be forced to return long-held prisoners of war in exchange for captured Russian conscripts. Here we find the deepest application of the ‘deep battle’ idea, for this wound affects Russians differently than the loss of contraktniki (контрактники). The loss of Kursk hurts Putin especially. Gen. Syrskyi keeps aiming right at the minds of Russians, high and low, and stabbing them deep. They can make it stop any time they want.
