[Korrespondent] 11:59 Russians are accommodating refugees from Sudzha in the Kursk region in Mariupol, said the mayor's adviser Petr Andryushchenko. According to him, Russian refugees are staying in temporary accommodation centers set up by the United Russia party. The "authorities" of the occupiers have chosen stolen Ukrainian property in the Primorsky district of Mariupol, not far from the sea, as a place for the refugees to stay.
11:10 The Guardian writes that Moscow knew about the preparation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces operation in the Kursk region, but failed to prepare. At the end of August, the publication's journalists met with a Ukrainian special forces group, which seized documents from abandoned Russian positions and returned to Ukraine. Most of the documents came from units of the 488th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of Russia. The entry from January 4 spoke of the "potential for a breakthrough on the state border" of Ukrainian armed groups, after which there were several more warnings.
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Kursk operation. Russia knew, but could do nothing
Several months before the start of the Ukrainian Armed Forces offensive in the Kursk region, the Russian command foresaw the possibility of such an operation.
During the Kursk operation, Ukrainian military personnel captured Russian army documentation. The documents were handed over to journalists from The Guardian by representatives of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (SOF) at the end of August. They show that the Russian command foresaw the possibility of such an operation several months before the Ukrainian Armed Forces began their offensive in the Kursk region.
EXPECTED AN OFFENSIVE
The documents include both printed orders sent to various units and handwritten journals, the publication writes. The earliest documents date back to the end of 2023, and the latest entries were made six weeks before Ukraine launched an operation in the Kursk region on August 6. The documents mostly came from small units of the 488th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the Russian Armed Forces, including the second company of the 17th Battalion.
The Ukrainian operation in the Kursk region, writes The Guardian, “caught Kyiv’s Western allies and many members of the Ukrainian elite by surprise, as very few people were involved in the planning.” However, the publication emphasizes that documents seized from Russian military personnel indicate that warnings about a possible Ukrainian offensive and an attempt to occupy Sudzha were received for months before the operation began.
In particular, the document, dated January 4, speaks of the “potential for a breakthrough at the state border” in the Kursk region by Ukrainian units. It orders intensifying preparations to prevent an attack.
Another document, dated February 19, shows that unit commanders were warned of Ukrainian plans to “rapidly advance from the Sumy region into Russian territory to a depth of up to 80 kilometers in order to create a four-day “corridor” before the arrival of the main units of the Ukrainian army in armored vehicles.”
In mid-June, The Guardian reports, a specific warning was issued about plans for a Ukrainian offensive “in the direction of Yunakovka-Sudzha, with the aim of taking control of Sudzha.” The documents also show that Russian commanders predicted that Ukrainian forces would attempt to destroy the bridge over the Seim River in order to disrupt Russian supply lines in the region.
WE JUST RAN
Despite the fact that the Russian command admitted the possibility of a breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region, the military complained about the lack of forces and insufficient training. Thus, one of the documents, dated June, said that the units deployed in the border areas “are on average only 60-70 percent staffed and mainly represent reserves with poor training.”
After the offensive in the Kursk region began, recalled the Ukrainian military officer who handed over the documents to The Guardian, many Russian soldiers abandoned their positions. Ukrainian Armed Forces units quickly occupied border settlements, including Sudzha. “They fled without even destroying the documents,” the source emphasized.
From the documents captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Russian territory, it follows that the command of the Russian Armed Forces has to take into account the low morale of the military. In particular, the internal document flow talks about the consequences for the morale of the Russian military due to the suicide of one of the soldiers, who was in a “long-term depression due to service in the Russian army.” The soldier committed suicide in January 2024.
Following the suicide, commanders were ordered to identify soldiers who were “not mentally prepared to perform their duties or who were prone to deviant behavior, and to organize their redistribution and transfer to military medical institutions.”
To maintain the proper psychological state, commanders were ordered to ensure that their subordinates watched and listened to Russian state media every day, and that once a week they were given political information “aimed at maintaining and improving the political, moral and psychological state of the personnel.”