The Ukrainian army, which continues its offensive in the Kursk region of Russia, may almost double its incursions into Russian territory in the coming days after destroying, or at least seriously damaging, three strategically important bridges.
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“There are likely to be thousands of Russians who will be surrounded and possibly surrender,” notes Xavier Titelmann, a former military pilot and aviation specialist at Air et Cosmos magazine.Obviously“There will be a pocket with the Russians who will no longer be able to get supplies or get out.”
In an interview with LCI, the analyst explained that the solutions for these Russian forces, now stuck between the Sim River and the Ukrainian border, will be limited.
“[Les Russes] They will have to create temporary floating bridges, which means they will have to abandon heavy equipment, in any case, their logistics will not work properly, just as happened in Kherson. [dans le sud de l’Ukraine] “At the end of 2022 when they had to leave the area,” Mr. Titelman explains.
The successes associated with this Ukrainian incursion continue to surprise the world, especially Russia, which has not yet been able to close the gap and stop the Ukrainian advance, says the man who returned from a visit to Ukraine to monitor the situation on the ground.
“There is a failure of Russian intelligence, which is dramatic again – we don’t understand how that could be possible – there is a tactical failure in the sense that they don’t have the men on the ground to stop the Ukrainians from pushing. There is a failure of situation management because they can’t defend the three bridges, which creates a pocket of hundreds of square kilometres that the Ukrainians will be able to annex in a flash with thousands of prisoners,” he added.
Possibility of almost doubling the openings
The area that could end up in Ukrainian hands is about 700 square kilometers, according to several estimates.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Sunday that 1,150 square kilometers had been seized after 10 days of attacks on Russian territory, but the claims coming from Kyiv may be exaggerated.
However, as Cyril Amurski, a freelance French war correspondent based in Ukraine, puts it, the sector controlled by the Ukrainian army “will now be more or less 1,000 kilometers.”2 1700 km away2“Which would nearly double Ukraine’s conquests of Russian territory.
Three bridges destroyed
Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk has released two videos in recent days showing strikes on bridges crossing the Seim River in Russia.
In the first report, published on August 16, we can note a strike that brutally struck a section of the road connecting the two banks of the Sim River.
Reuters was able to confirm the location of this first video using satellite imagery that determined the action was indeed filmed in the Kursk region, near the urban town of Glushkovo.
Furthermore, these same images published by Planet Labs indicate that the bridge has been completely cut off and is out of use.
The second video, posted on August 18, shows another, more severe strike on a second bridge.
Reuters again geolocated the attack, stating that it also took place in the Kursk region, which connects the village of Zvannoye to the northern bank of the Seim River.
The raid caused severe damage to the bridge but did not destroy it. We can see in the pictures that the raid left a large hole in the middle of the infrastructure.
Then on Monday, the European news agency reported that the third bridge over the Sim River in the Kursk Oblast region had finally come under another Ukrainian attack, according to information from a Russian investigator.
The French newspaper L'Actualité also raised the issue of statements by a Russian investigator on Tuesday, confirming that the latter revealed, under the cover of anonymity, that Ukraine had “completely destroyed” a bridge and damaged two others in the area.
“As a result of targeted shelling with rockets and artillery on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in the village of Karizha… a third bridge over the Seim River was damaged,” the French magazine noted, following anonymous statements by a representative of the Russian Investigative Committee in a video posted on the Telegram channel of Vladimir Solovyov, host and promoter of the state-run Russia 1 TV channel.
