The Battle of Kursk in 1943 remains one of my favourite pieces of war history, likely because I first read of it in a book my Dad got in the early 1970’s, Marshal Zhukov’s Greatest Battles, written by the man himself. Kursk was one of four battles which Zhukov was in charge of (the others being Moscow, Stalingrad and Berlin). He was demoted by Stalin from being Chief of the General Staff in the wake of the German invasion in 1941, but given his success in defending Leningrad and then Moscow, eventually promoted to be Deputy Commander in Chief next to Stalin, a position no other was ever given.
Kursk was one of the largest armoured engagements of all time. There have been recent historic arguments that more tanks were actually in combat in the early stages of Barbarossa, but for me that counts about as much as the Red Army Air Force being the largest in the world at the time. Losing thousands of obsolete tanks in 1941 doesn’t compare to the awesome and terrible tank battles of Kursk with T-34’s against Tigers and Panthers.
And now we have the Battle of Kursk (2024). Not a video game but real life as the Ukrainians have surprised everybody – including their US-Euro supporters – by launching an attack which has long been anticipated, but in an entirely different place than expected, an actual invasion of Russia.
Historically these have not gone well for the invaders, but Ukraine is certainly not aiming to emulate the French and the Germans. So what’s going on here? There are two takes I think readers will appreciate.
Strieff, Red State
The first is from a former US infantry officer who has been covering this war from the start with his Putin’s War series (currently at Week 128 and which you should check out as it covered the start of this invasion), and who has now started a Russia Invaded series, for as long as this facet of the war lasts (“I think we can rule out it being a smash-and-grab raid”). He reckons that the strategy has two political objectives while the tactics have military ones, although he can’t see the operational concept around the latter. To summarise him:
- Political:
- Ukraine could not stay on the defensive in a stalemated war: it had to show the US and Europe that it was doing something with all those weapons and training they’d supplied.
- The destabilization of Putin’s government. It strikes at his legitimacy because he’s made winning the war in Ukraine an existential event for himself, and he’s reacting in a way that shows he knows that to be the case.
- This is not just grabbing territory to ultimately exchange in a peace deal for the Ukrainian lands the Russians hold along the Black Sea coast.
I’d add to that the political effect of boosting morale inside Ukraine, though there’s no indication that was the thinking. It’s a bit like the RAF Dam Busters raid in 1943: militarily insignificant but powerful on the home front.
- Military:
- The Ukrainians are now astride the major logistics route for the Russian invasion of Kharkiv, which could stop that.
- It will likely force Russia to pull troops from the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Ukraine. There are already videos of these troop movements, courtesy of Russian Milbloggers on Telegram channels and ultimately from Russian troops, who are only just now getting their cellphones taken away from them.
The Ukrainians by contrast have maintained superb operational security and thus surprise in this effort, despite a lot of planning and preparation which reportedly lasted three months, and which is not a small raid, involving three brigades and somewhere between 6000-10,000 soldiers.
And it does seem to have had the desired effect on Putin. The language coming out of the Kremlin and the Duma (Russia’s Parliament) has been very sober and Putin removed the Army command of the war and placed the FSB in charge. Specifically one of his old FSB bodyguards, one Aleksey Dyumin. Yet at the same time he has either refused or been unable to fire the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and numerous other failed commanders. The corrupt system that Putin has built over the last twenty years, of cronies with their fingers in the pie, has come back to bite him in the butt.
If there’s a Zhukov in that mess he hasn’t emerged yet.
But militarily we’re not going to see anything like the American Army’s great flanking sweep in Desert Storm or Patton’s run through France. Not something like this…
… with the Ukrainians smashing across the Russian border a couple of hundred klicks further south into the Voronezh Oblast before turning in a great arc SW through Luhansk, Donetsk and ending at Mariupol on the coast to completely cut off the Russian forces.
They simply don’t have the troops, the firepower or, frankly the history of training at all levels to enable such a thing to happen. But they do have other options.
Mick Ryan
The second take is from a retired Australian Army Major General and looks at those options. But he also provides a bit of history that shows the Ukrainians did this while still being wedded to their Red Army past rather than trying the fancy stuff that is second nature to US forces.
The concept of an Operational Maneuver Group had its origins in the Second World War German Panzergruppes and Soviet mobile groups. The concept matured during the Cold War, as Operational Maneuver Groups…In its mature conceptual state, an Operational Maneuver Group was designed to be a combined arms formation that was flexible in size and organization, and designed to operate further away from friendly forces from normal Soviet armies.
He reckons that this is what the Ukrainians have, albeit at a brigade level rather than the divisions the Red Army used, and so he refers to it as the Operational Maneuver Group (Kursk) (OMG-K) in his article. Summarising his analysis:
- Consolidate, dig in, and defend until some form of negotiation takes place. High risk because that takes a lot of military engineering logistics and it’s an exposed salient. The political upsides don’t compensate for the military downside risks.
- Partial withdrawal to more easily defended territory. Fewer troops needed than option 1; fewer to lose; it continues to humiliate Putin, forcing the Russians to attack and draw troops away from the Ukrainian areas they’ve invaded; provides a similar negotiation wedge to option 1 but with less risk.
- Full withdrawal. Preserves the combat-experienced troops; Putin still humiliated and appearing weak because he was not able to punish the invaders; sends a strategic message to Ukraine’s supporters (and the Russians) that it can go on the offensive without getting badly hurt; retains the political and morale boost for the Ukrainians.
Ryan reckons the selection of the options is influenced by the following factors:
- Russia in the Donbas and beyond. Russian troop withdrawals.
- Russian response to the incursion in Kursk. Their response so far shows shock but they’ll recover.
- Political considerations – Ukraine. Morale.
- Political considerations – Strategic. Keeping the US and NATO onboard re support.
- Supportability. How long can Ukraine stay on offense here? When do they stop, for it has to be sometime?
He finishes up by making an interesting point that Ukraine has taken quite a risk with this operation simply to change the status quo, and that this sort of risk-taking is something that Western nations have not done in decades because they haven’t faced existential risks, including in the case of 9/11.
He finishes by asking whether the risk of not using these troops in the Donbas area and points further south for defence and attack are worth what has been gained here. So far it appears to have been.
So far.
No Minister 
Zhukov was also the Victor of Khalkin Gol in 1939 when he walloped te Japanese.
Yes, IIRC from the book they covered that in the introduction because he used the same basic tactics that he’d repeat at Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk:
Massive buildup of forces, esp tanks, artillery and planes.
Slow attack on a frontline, which could appear as mere defence (at Kursk they let the Germans attack first), designed to grind down and draw in the enemy.
Flank attacks by powerful forces once it was determined that they’d stopped on the frontline, followed by massive encirclement (Stalingrad) or withdrawal with heavy losses under threat of such.
It wasn’t a cheap, brilliant way of winning a battle but the other side sure knew that they’d lost. Khalkin Go dissauded the Japanese Army from attacking the USSR for the whole of WWII, which, when you consider their fortitude against the Americans, is a testimony to how badly Zhukov hammered them.
Similarly after Moscow the Germans had to look South. After Stalingrad they had to risk Kursk (and Zhukov and company knew they were coming at that point). After Kursk they could only retreat for the rest of the war.
Japanese had two options in WW 2.
Army wanted to go North and into the USSR and take the resources there. Navy wanted to go South.
Army tried in 1939 and got walloped so Navy won and 6 months after Peral Harbour were on the road to defeat after the Coral Sea and Midway.
You mentioned the dam buster raid. People have no idea just how much that meant to the people of Britain.
Sometimes it just needs an event to help start a change. Crossing the Delaware. Gettysburg. Invading Russia for the first time since WW2.
It’s going to be interesting to watch.