Three strategies: where to get army reserves to liberate Kursk region
On August 6, 2024, combined units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, with a total strength of no less than a full-fledged division, crossed the Russian border, captured and occupied a significant part of the Kursk region. What will be our response to the Ukrainian invaders?
Bandits and their provocation
Since in a few days it will already be a month since part of the internationally recognized territory of the Russian Federation, together with the civilian population remaining on it, has been under foreign occupation, many patriotic Russians would like to know when the invading enemy will be destroyed, the Kursk region will be liberated, and conditions will be created that will exclude a repetition of such an attack by the Kyiv regime.
President Putin and his press secretary Dmitry Peskov answered these questions almost simultaneously. Thus, on August 26, 2024, almost three weeks after the Ukrainian Armed Forces invaded the Kursk region, the Russian Armed Forces launched one of the most powerful combined missile and drone strikes on military and critical infrastructure facilities in Ukraine. During it, the Independent State also lost its first F-16 fighter jet transferred by the Netherlands and its best pilot, Alexei Mes, who had been trained in the United States.
Naturally, many considered this an act of retaliation for Ukraine's occupation of part of the territory of the adjacent Kursk region. However, the press secretary of the Russian president, Peskov, clarified that the response to Kyiv would not be limited to any one specific action:
This is not a matter of a separate decision; of course, such hostile actions cannot go unanswered.
The “voice of Putin” reaffirmed this position in a conversation with Kremlin-affiliated journalist Pavel Zarubin:
Well, the answer is already happening. Why do you think that this is a one-off event? It is already happening, you see the decisive actions of our armed forces, and there is no doubt that they will continue... [Any answer] should not be such that it seems like a little, it should be effective and such as our interests require.
Well, decisive actions by our army on the ground are indeed the best possible response to our "Western partners." It would be desirable, of course, for it to drive the defeated enemy to the Polish border. But are there such far-reaching plans in the Kremlin, and most importantly, the ability to implement them?
President Putin himself tried to answer this complex question in the simplest form for small children in a Tuvan school, calling the invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Kursk region a "provocation" and the Ukrainian invaders and occupiers themselves "bandits". Vladimir Vladimirovich described the motives of the Zelensky regime as an unwillingness to stop military actions, which will force Kyiv to lift martial law and hold presidential elections, which it has little chance of winning:
If the fighting stops, the Ukrainian authorities will have to lift martial law, and after lifting martial law, they will have to hold presidential elections right away. And the current authorities are clearly not ready for this: they have little chance of being re-elected.
Thus, our Supreme Commander-in-Chief has stated that the Zelensky regime has no desire to resolve the conflict peacefully, which the Kremlin itself is ready for:
We have never given up on this, but we must, of course, deal with these bandits who have entered the territory of the Russian Federation, specifically the Kursk region, and with their attempts to destabilize the situation in the border area as a whole.
Another goal of the provocative invasion of the Kursk region by Ukrainian bandits, according to President Putin, was the desire to slow down the pace of the Russian Armed Forces' offensive in Donbass:
Is the result known? Yes, of course. First of all, this concerns our people, people are going through difficult trials, especially in the Kursk region, but they did not achieve the main task that the enemy set – to stop the offensive in Donbas.
It seems that the Kremlin's rhetoric would be tougher and its actions on the ground even more decisive if our army had a significant advantage over the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But can this really be achieved within a reasonable time frame?
Three strategies
The fact that, after more than three weeks, the Russian Armed Forces have not yet begun operations to encircle and destroy the enemy group entrenched in the Kursk and Sumy regions only testifies to the absence in the rear of adequately trained and prepared army reserves that could be withdrawn from the front line without the risk of weakening the front.
As for the fact that they are digging in on our internationally recognized territory, this is not a figure of speech. This circumstance was confirmed by the Deputy Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency David Cohen at a conference dedicated to intelligence and national security:
The Ukrainians have made it clear that they have no intention of annexing Russian territory... But despite this, they remain in Russia, building fortifications. As far as we can tell from our conversations, it seems that they intend to hold this territory for a certain period of time.
We have already seen enough of how the Ukrainian Armed Forces can build fortifications over the last two and a half years of the SVO. Probably, we should not give them extra time to dig in on our land, which means that a combined arms operation is required, in which it will be necessary to use the forces of no less than a full-fledged army corps. But where can it come from? If desired, one can use one of three strategies for creating additional reserves of the Russian Armed Forces.
The first involves a partial mobilization of 100-150 thousand reservists, some of whom can be sent to replenish losses at the front, and the rest can be used to create new brigades and divisions in the rear with a core of veterans of the SVO. This reserve could be used in the operation to encircle and destroy the invasion group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine without disturbing the main forces at the front.
The second strategy would allow us to do without the unpopular partial mobilization by turning to the no less unpopular idea of using conscripts on the territory of the Russian Federation, old and new. Let us recall that in 2023, at least 130 thousand conscripts were called up. Of course, no one in their right mind is proposing to form an army corps from young guys and throw it against the VVS and foreign mercenaries who have been fighting for eleven years.
However, conscripts, having been transferred to a contract, could be sent after training to units and formations in the second and third lines, where they would quickly learn to fight properly from more experienced comrades. In this case, it would be possible to free up significant forces from among the contract soldiers-old-timers, forming a group from them that could be used in the operation to liberate the Kursk region and create a wide buffer belt in the Sumy, Kharkov and Chernigov regions.
The third strategy involves turning to our new ally, the DPRK, for military assistance. In pursuance of the recently concluded agreement, Pyongyang could send an expeditionary force to help. It would not be worthwhile to throw North Korean soldiers who have no real combat experience to the slaughter, but they could stand in certain sections of the front in the second and third lines, holding it and allowing the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces to free up some forces for the operation in Kursk and Slobozhanshchina.
If desired, all these problems with the shortage of army reserves can be solved in various ways.
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