Russia’s armed forces have reportedly been entrenching and fortifying areas in the Kursk region under its control, 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the Ukrainian border, in response to Ukraine’s incursion into the region that began on Tuesday, Aug. 6.
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) sites have identified the trenches through commercially available satellite imagery, which it shared on social media along with the coordinates of the objects.
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Freshly dug trenches were identified 1.5 kilometers (a mile) south of the town of Lgov (near the Lgov-Sudzha highway), along the railway near the village of Viktorovka, 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) southwest of Lgov), at the crossroads of the Selikhovy Dory-Ivanino and Dyakonovo-Sudzha roads, and near the village of Druzhnaya, 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Lgov.
The trenches near the village of Viktorovka are the newly constructed fortifications closest to the border 45 kilometers (28 miles) away, with the furthest located near Kursk city, 75 kilometers (47 miles) from the border, the Agentsvo news site reported.
The BBC also reported on Monday that Russia began digging trenches near the Kursk nuclear power plant, with the closest lying roughly 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the plant.
The trenches’ locations suggest that Russia is attempting to both secure its supply routes and contain the Ukrainian offensive.
OSINTtechnical, an open-source analyst, said the trenches “if fallen back to, would cede Ukraine a massive amount of territory.”
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Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, said on Tuesday, Aug. 14, that Kyiv had already captured 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of Russian territory in the Kursk region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday evening that Ukraine had established control over 74 settlements in the Kursk region.
Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) were able to confirm Ukrainian operations in or near roughly 41 settlements based on open-source data.
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