Back to the Bloodlands: Operation Krepost [Big Serge on Kursk operation]

Substack ^ | 8/20/24 | Big Serge

[EnderWiggin1970]

On Tuesday, August 6, the Russo-Ukrainian War took an unexpected twist with the beginning of a brigade-level Ukrainian assault on Kursk Oblast, across the border from Ukrainian Sumy. The decision by Ukrainian command to willingly open up a new front, at a time when their defenses on critical axes of the Donbas are failing, is both aggressive and fraught with peril. The sensational spectacle of a Ukrainian offensive into prewar Russia in a region that is operationally remote from the critical theater of the war has whipped the peanut gallery into a frenzy, and most commentators and observers seem to have fled straightaway to their base narrative instincts. Russian “doomers” have been quick to denounce the affair as a catastrophic failure of preparedness by the Russian Ministry of Defense, accelerationists have trumpeted the immateriality of Russian red lines, while the more disillusioned pro-Ukrainian commenters have despaired of the operation as a wasteful sideshow which dooms the Donbas line to defeat.

People form opinions very rapidly in the current information ecosystem, and the prospect of excitement often leads them to throw caution to the wind despite the orgy of misinformation and deception that surrounds such events. It is worth noting, however, that only two weeks have passed since the beginning of an operation that apparently nobody was expecting, and we should therefore be cautious of certainty and carefully distinguish between what we think and what we know. With that in mind, let’s take a careful survey of the Ukrainian operation as it stands and attempt to parse out both the strategic concept of the assault and its possible trajectories.

[rxh4n1]

” One can imagine her woke advisors coming in will not want to be saddled with “Joe Biden’s” failed war and want their own clean slate.”

To her it’s just a bunch of white crackers. They’re all the same. She might be more likely to cut off the money gusher than Trump.