The commander of what he described as a “combined assault detachment” gave an account of the early March operation in Russia’s Kursk region that seemed intended to put a positive spin on what was generally considered a failure.
Described as a veteran airborne battalion commander, referred to only by his callsign Morpekh, he said the operation was called Operation Potok or Operation Stream-3.
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He said that his team was made up of troops from the 11th Guards Airborne Assault Brigade, the 30th Regiment of the 72nd Motorized Rifle Division, an Akhmat special forces detachment, as well as volunteers from the Veterans and Vostok-V assault brigades.
Morpekh said that the assault force were “disguised” as Ukrainian soldiers, wearing blue armbands similar to those being worn as an identification symbol by Kyiv’s troops, in an attempt to cause confusion among Ukrainian defenders – although video taken at the time showed Russian troops wearing red armbands.
He confirmed that his detachment, which Western media had said at the time could have consisted of several hundred troops, had spent almost a week moving 15 kilometers (9.4 miles) inside the closed down gas pipeline, that led to the Russian town of Sudzha, which was occupied by Ukrainian troops at the time.
According to the DefenseMirror military issues website, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said that more than 600 personnel had taken part in the operation.
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Morpekh said: “We should understand that there were real enemy positions there. Accordingly, in our blue armbands, it was possible for some time, even if only 5-10 minutes, for personnel to advance camouflaged and disorganize the enemy.”
According to his account, given almost two weeks later, the ruse was initially successful but once discovered, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) began shelling the areas where his troops were located.
The pro-Russian military blogger, “Two Majors” said that the force had captured several settlements along the way during the “pipe maneuver,” and simply mentioned that “fighting was taking place in Sudzha.”
He and Morpekh played down the severity of the casualties this detachment suffered. According to Ukraine’s General Staff the infiltrators had been detected by unmanned aerial vehicle reconnaissance after which they were ambushed by Ukrainian airborne troops.
Myroslav Hai, military head of Ukraine’s Peace and Co Foundation told the NV media outlet that about 80% of the Russian sabotage group were eliminated. He also said that radio intercepts revealed the Russian troop’s panic at the time, complaining they had been sent to certain death.
He said the Russian operation had tried to replicate a tactic it used during the battle for Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region, when they had managed to infiltrate behind Ukrainian defensive positions through a disused two-kilometer (1.25 mile) long drainage pipe.
The TASS report comes as the latest UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) estimate that Russian military casualties during the war in Ukraine could be as high as 900,000 with a up to a quarter of a million fatalities. since the 2022 full-scale invasion.
Despite this Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have rejected US calls for a 30-day ceasefire even though Ukraine has agreed to it.
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