Observers outside Ukraine on Wednesday said Kyiv’s forces holding a salient in Russia’s Kursk region had been defeated and were retreating out of the country.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian open-source intelligence organization DeepState reported that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are now out of Sudzha – the center of Ukrainian resistance in the sector since Kyiv’s forces captured it back in August – but were still in the Kursk Oblast.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
Kyiv Post reached out to Ukraine’s General Staff for comment. The official comment there was: “We currently have no information on the operational situation,” however, General Staff promised to provide updates once more details become available.
The founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) investigative project, Ruslan Leviev, in an interview on the Russian independent television channel Dozhd, said evidence was strong that Russian forces had ejected Ukrainian troops from Sudzha.
“We saw that all the areas that gradually came under the control of Russian troops were taken practically without a fight. The same is true for Sudzha. Yesterday there were videos [showing that] Russian troops were on the eastern outskirts of the city. Today we see Russian troops already on the opposite outskirts. And again, there is no footage of the fighting... In fact, we can already say that the entire city of Sudzha has come under the control of Russian troops… Overall, the history of the Kursk bridgehead is coming to an end, and Ukrainian troops are leaving.”
Ukraine’s Stocks and Eurobonds Surge After US-Ukraine Talks in Jeddah
The Austrian military expert Tom Cooper in a flash Wednesday report on developments in the Kursk region entitled “The End of the Kursk Bulge” said in part: “[This report is a] relatively short one to ‘announce’ the end of the Ukrainian bulge/salient inside the Kursk Oblast of the Russian Federation… Sure, the Glavcom (General Oleksandr) Syrsky – who assumed direct command of the sector – claimed there’s no danger of encirclement, but it seems that he’s been overtaken by developments, as so often. Already around the time Syrsky was giving that interview, the mass of the ZSU [Ukraine’s military] troops was withdrawn from Russia.”
Russian official and milblogger accounts told of an even worse situation including the rout of Ukrainian troops. The pro-Moscow Romanov Lite wrote on Wednesday: “They (the Ukrainian troops) are just running.”
A March 11 situation update by the Washington DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said: “Russian forces continue to make confirmed advances in Kursk Oblast and have likely begun attacking Sudzha.” That analysis acknowledged multiple Russian claims of Ukrainian defensive collapse around the Kursk salient but said there wasn’t enough information available to confirm it.
Official Ukrainian sources have acknowledged retreat within the Kursk salient but claimed Ukrainian defensive lines were holding. A Wednesday morning situation update by Ukraine’s Army General Staff said of the situation in the Kursk sector: “In the operational zone in Kursk, units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine yesterday repelled 33 attacks by Russian invaders. In addition, the enemy carried out 22 air strikes using 28 guided bombs, and also carried out 280 artillery attacks on the positions of our troops and settlements, including nine from multiple launch rocket systems.”
Battle information feeds of six Ukrainian fighting units recently geolocated to the Kursk sector and monitored by Kyiv Post offered no updates on the combat situation on Wednesday.
You can also highlight the text and press Ctrl + Enter
