by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Remember the old adage — sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me.
In the war by the US and its Anglo-European allies to destroy Russia since 1945, the propaganda war has been lost by the Russians many times over. That war is still being lost.
But for the first time since 1945, the battlefield war is being won by the Russian General Staff.
The uncertainty which remains is whether President Vladimir Putin will continue to restrict the General Staff’s war plans in order that Putin can go to negotiations with the Americans on terms which will forego the demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian territory between Kiev and the Polish border, and concede to the Kiev regime unhindered control of the cities to the east — Kharkov, Odessa, Dniepropetrovsk.
Call those terms Istanbul-II. As with the draft terms initialled in Istanbul at the end of March 2022, Istanbul-II amounts to an exchange of dominant Russian military power for US and Ukrainian signatures on paper with false intention and temporary duration.
The US administration says it believes Putin will concede. It also believes that by staging its war of pinpricks — that’s the drone, artillery and missile barrages fired by the Ukrainian military, directed by the US and UK – in the Black Sea and Russia’s western border regions, Putin’s red lines and threats of retaliation are exposed as empty bluff. The same interpretation of Putin, and confidence that he will accept US terms, are the foundation of the Ukraine “peace plan” of Donald Trump’s advisors. The Trump plan’s offer of “some limited sanctions relief” reflects the conviction in Washington that Putin’s oligarch constituency can be bribed to push Putin into the same “frozen war” concessions as Roman Abramovich got Putin to accept at Istanbul-I – until the General Staff stopped them both.
Putin’s restrictions on the General Staff’s proposals for neutralizing the US and British air surveillance and electronic warfare operations; and his orders to stand by while the Ukrainians have assembled several thousand forces, first to cross into Kursk, and then into Bryansk and Belgorod, are now as visible in Moscow as they have been in Washington.
Moscow sources believe it was the Kremlin which was taken by surprise by the Kursk attack on August 6, but not the General Staff and the military intelligence agency GRU. They understood the battlefield intelligence as it was coming in and requested Putin’s agreement to respond. In retrospect, they say “we told you so”; they imply their hands were tied by the Kremlin orders.
“My understanding for now,” says one of the sources, “is that these are pinpricks that feel painful but they are not life threatening. Russia will not take any land, for now, other than the four regions. It should be the eight regions but it’s obvious Putin doesn’t have the will and the military does not have the capacity to hold. So we will see Ukrainians inside Kursk for a while. But it should be downplayed because it should not be allowed to be a bargain chip in negotiations the other side is aiming at.”
Putin said this himself, the source points out at his meeting on August 12 with the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, and others. “These [Kursk] actions clearly aim to achieve a primary military objective: to halt the advance of our forces in their effort to fully liberate the territories of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, the Novorossiya region.” Putin also said: “It is now becoming increasingly clear why the Kiev regime rejected our proposals for a peaceful settlement, as well as those from interested and neutral mediators…. It seems the opponent is aiming to strengthen their negotiating position for the future. However, what kind of negotiations can we have with those who indiscriminately attack civilians and civilian infrastructure, or pose threats to nuclear power facilities? What is there to discuss with such parties?”
“It’s obvious at this point,” comments a military source, “that the Americans and Ukrainians have decided that Putin will come to terms if they snatch enough Russian territory and keep up their strikes behind the Russian lines…The Ukrainians are going for broke in the north while the centre collapses. But they know, no matter how expensive it is, the longer they remain on the attack, the worse it looks for the Russian leadership. They also have the measure of Putin who gives orders for half measures.”
This is also obvious in the Security Council in Moscow. The Council’s deputy secretary, ex-president Dmitri Medvedev, made the point explicitly in his Telegram account declaration on August 21, implying that until he had said it, no one else dared: “In my opinion, recently, even theoretically, there has been one danger – the negotiation trap, into which our country could fall under certain circumstances; for example. Namely, the early unnecessary peace talks proposed by the international community and imposed on the Kiev regime with unclear prospects and consequences.” Medvedev was referring to Istanbul-I. “After the neo-Nazis committed an act of terrorism in the Kursk region, everything has fallen into place. The idle chatter of unauthorized intermediaries on the topic of the beautiful world has been stopped. Now everyone understands everything, even if they don’t say it out loud. They understand that there will BE NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE COMPLETE DEFEAT OF THE ENEMY! [Medvedev’s caps]”
Medvedev’s reference to the “idle chatter of unauthorized intermediaries” is to the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, whom Putin endorsed at the Kremlin on July 5 for the ill-concealed purpose of sending a message to presidential candidate Trump with whom Orban talked on July 10. For that story, click.
Days before his meeting with Orban, Putin had announced his abandonment of the demilitarization, denazification objectives of the Special Military Operation in exchange for “the complete withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and from the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.”
This change of objective has not yet been acknowledged by the Kremlin media; it is opposed by the Russian military and by the majority of Russian voters. “War is war — either we go to war or surrender” – is a popular slogan on Russian social media for Putin to stop restricting the General Staff.
“The problem for the Russians,” comments a military source, “is that they, especially the Kremlin, the Defense Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry have lost the propaganda war. This puts them in a bad spot as they need more than stopping, then pushing the Ukrainians back in Kursk, or a Donbass victory, in order to recover. They need to knock the Ukrainians out of the war. But on that Putin says one thing — he does another.”
The Ukrainian border crossing began between 5 and 5:30 in the morning of August 6.
The first reports from the Defense Ministry in Moscow were false. On the afternoon of August 7, Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, in a public briefing of the president and other officials, claimed: “At 5.30 am on August 6, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine numbering up to 1,000 people went on the offensive with the aim of capturing a section of the territory of the Sudzha District in the Kursk Region. The joint actions by the state border covering units together with border guards and reinforcement units, air strikes, missile forces, and artillery fire stopped the enemy’s advance into the territory in the Kursk direction…We will complete the operation by defeating the enemy and reaching the state border.”
This Ukraine force count was much too low; their advance was not stopped; the restoration of the state border has not been achieved after three weeks of fighting. Either Gerasimov knew much better and was lying to Putin for public propaganda; or else he didn’t know what the true situation was.
General Gerasimov (left) on video link reads his report to Putin seated with Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Federal Security Service director Alexander Bortnikov and Sergei Shoigu, ex-Defense Minister and now Security Council head. The report had been edited by the Kremlin in advance which is why Gerasimov’s eyes did not stray from the script. Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/ -- at 16:48. Reported with a delay of three hours by Boris Rozhin on Colonel Cassad -- 20:08. Rozhin and his military sources were skeptical; Rozhin was told to stick to Gerasimov’s script. For as long as he could, he did.
The General Staff’s misdirections were repeated by the only independent Russian media sources not directly under state control – the military bloggers, the best of whom are Boris Rozhin (Colonel Cassad) and Mikhail Zvinchuk (Rybar). Rozhin tried to downplay the attack through the first day, relying on Defense Ministry and region official releases. Rozhin’s first report appeared at 10:12 on the morning of August 6: “The governor of the Kursk region reported an attempt by the enemy forces to break through on the territory of the region. The attack was carried out by limited forces and was repulsed. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the FSB did not allow the breakthrough of the enemy’s forces”. This was false.
Gerasimov’s report to Putin exposed himself, the General Staff, and the Defense Ministry to a round of allegations of incompetence and negligence which were published a week later by media under Kremlin control. These allegations include a failure by Russian intelligence to detect the concentration of Ukrainian forces in advance of the border crossing, and a personal failure by Gerasimov to “ignore several warnings about a Ukrainian buildup near the Kursk border. ” An anonymously sourced report by a non-Russian reporter with a record of plagiarism and fabrication claims to be based on “hawks in the siloviki apparatus [who] don’t make it a secret that Gerasimov should be fired” and replaced, the reporter claimed, by a combination of the discredited General Sergei Surovikin and the head of the Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov.
The campaign against Gerasimov also appears to be a defence of Putin’s advance knowledge and his operational orders to Gerasimov before August 6: “President Putin’s reaction to the Kursk invasion was visible in his body language. He was furious for the flagrant military/intel failure; for the obvious loss of face; and for the fact that this buries any possibility of rational dialogue about ending the war.”
Moscow sources explain these are Kremlin claims aimed at whitewashing Putin’s refusal to allow the General Staff to extend their operations into the Ukrainian Sumy region to break up the attack concentration in advance; and at concealing Putin’s purpose in preparing for the Istanbul-II negotiations. The sources also point out that the National Guard, the well-armed and highly mobile presidential force, has failed to appear in any role in the Kursk region, not even in defence of the predictable target of the Kurchatov nuclear power plant. The Guard commander, Victor Zolotov, Putin’s former bodyguard, did not appear in the Kremlin meetings on the Kursk operation until August 12, when he was at the bottom of the table on Putin’s right, sitting opposite Gerasimov; in the Kremlin record Zolotov had nothing to say.
Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/
The seating arrangement reveals that on Putin’s right he had placed the four officials he has trusted to enforce the limits of military operations and protect Putin from the recriminations now arising – from left to right, Victor Zolotov; Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov; General Alexei Dyumin, the former presidential bodyguard presidential and assistant whom Putin appointed six days into the operation to oversee the Kursk operations; and Sergei Shoigu, the ex-defense minister and currently Security Council head. On Putin’s left, there were Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin; Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Federal Security Service director Alexander Bortnikov, and General Gerasimov.
The sponsored attack on Gerasimov has not been repeated by the military bloggers, although they were slow to acknowledge the size of the attacking force, its breakthrough successes, the effectiveness of the US-Ukrainian electronic warfare systems, and the slowness of the Russian counter operations.
Through the first day Rozhin continued: “The attack was accompanied by massive use of drones and artillery fire. It looked like a demonstrative distraction with PR goals. As usual, it’s expensive… The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that the Ukrainian DRG retreated to its territory, some of the militants who tried to gain a foothold from the Kursk state border, blocked by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation [17:54]…The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that the Ukrainian DRG retreated to its territory, some of the militants who tried to gain a foothold from the Kursk state border, blocked by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. [19:19]… The purpose of this compound is to distract attention, to unload the pressure of our troops from Belgorod and impose a new small front [20:58]… due to the lack of personnel of objective control, it is difficult to establish the exact configuration of the front on these areas [20:59].”
Rozhin’s use of the Russian acronym DRG is revealing. It stands for Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group, meaning a hybrid of small units of scouts, special forces, and terrorists. The acronym had been used in reporting many Ukrainian incursions across the border for more than a year. Applied to the August 6 invasion of Kursk, this was false.
Just before midnight on August 6, Rozhin acknowledged the attack was far more serious. “a sufficiently large-scale operation, where the enemy is still using forces up to two brigades that are covered by a significant number of air defense systems (2 air defense systems were destroyed by our military in the afternoon) [23:27]” No precise number of Ukrainian forces was published.
Alexander Kots was claiming in a re-post by Rozhin: “According to the Big Soldier. The opposition today really tried there to act with the forces of a small armour group (up to 5 units of equipment) By the evening, the situation there was controlled by our military. War correspondent Kots and military sources from the spot confirm that the Big Soldier is behind us.” — 20:08 This was wishful thinking.
War correspondents, left to right: Boris Rozhin, Mikhail Zvinchuk, Alexander Kots, Yevgeny Krutikov.
It was not until 13:38 of August 7 that Rozhin managed to report that the Ukrainian forces were moving into Kursk in large numbers at high speed. “Ukrainian formations continue to strike all over the whole Kursk region which is still under the most massive fire, especially at Sudzh… Meanwhile, in another part of the Sumy region, the concentration of enemy forces is observed in the forest areas near the village of Privole, east of Glukhov city.” If such a concentration was reportable on August 7, it is inconceivable that the General Staff was not aware of the concentration forty-eight hours earlier.
It was not until August 20 that an American military writer publishing with the pen name Big Serge after the tsarist minister, Sergei Witte (1849-1915), reported a comprehensive and also accurate summary of the positional and tactical operations on both sides. Both Gerasimov and Putin are protected in this account.
The alibi for the alleged Russian intelligence failure is tree cover. “The Ukrainian grouping was able to achieve something approximating total surprise – a fact that was surprising to many, given the ubiquity of Russian reconnaissance drones in theaters like the Donbas. In fact, the terrain here was highly conducive for Ukraine. The Ukrainian side of the border on the Sumy-Kursk axis is covered with a thick forest canopy which gives the Ukrainians the rare opportunity to conceal the staging of its forces, while the presence of the city of Sumy only 30 kilometers from the border provides a base of support. The situation is highly similar to Ukraine’s Kharkov operation in 2022 (the AFU’s most impressive achievement of the war), in which the city of Kharkov and the forest belt around it provided the opportunity to stage forces largely undetected. These opportunities do not exist in the flat, mostly treeless Ukrainian south, where Ukraine’s 2023 offensive was heavily surveilled and bombarded on approach.”
Russian war reporters familiar with the heat signatures of trees, and with Russian infra-red and other technologies used in the army’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), dismiss the alibi; believe there was ample advance warning; suspect command failure at the Kremlin, not the General Staff.
The Moscow analyst who is closest to the GRU, Yevgeny Krutikov, initially reported at 09:19 of August 6 that “in the morning, the situation on the state border sharply escalated in Kursk Region areas (Sudzha direction). The Ukrainian force went to the breach of the border using reserves. It is not yet clear whether it is a display of troops for the media PR, or a real attempt to divert Russian forces on to a new direction.” The next day, Krutikov claimed “the enemy has no serious tactical reserves. At night, the enemy suffered heavy losses in armoured vehicles, but still tried to adjust the maximum to the border. Geographical objective: Sudzh…Tactical goal: fixing on a piece of territory for PR.” Krutikov reported the “real number” of the Ukrainian invasion force was “900 men” [09:08]. Two days later, he admitted the number was “two brigades” – “by the weekend, they will lose two brigades, and then gradually Sumy. That area has already begun to be evacuated.”
On August 8 Krutikov decided “on the third day of the invasion of the Kursk region, the plan of the Ukrainian offensive on this site became finally clarified…All this operation, although it has signs of combined-flying based on the number and composition of the forces involved, technically resembles a major raid or a powerful salvo or a breakout with an element of suicide. After three days of euphoria, the AFU [Armed Forces of the Ukraine] was on the verge of losing two strike brigades and in the future, part of the Sumy region. [This is] too expensive a price for the demonstration of the AFU’s ‘capacity’ and its pursuit of a ‘profitable position for negotiations.’ “
On August 9 Krutikov conceded “in the [battle] area, it is very bad with communication except for the military, so the assessment of operational information is delayed and does not accurately display the picture”. He had no situation reports to publish until August 12, but then Krutikov stopped publishing entirely for what he called “a technical break”. His blackout continued until August 20.
MAPPING THE COURSE OF THE KURSK OPERATIONS – AUGUST 6
Source: Bild, republished by Russian milblogger The Militarist
TERRITORIAL MOVEMENT BY THE UKRAINIAN FORCES — AUGUST 6-20
Source: Kommersant
CONCENTRATION OF NEW UKRAINIAN FORCES ALONG THE BRYANSK AND KURSK BORDER AS OF AUGUST 21
Source: Military Summary blog, August 22.
It is noteworthy that according to the Military Summary, “33% of the Ukrainian army is now concentrated in this area – to force Putin to negotiations”. Precise numbers of men and equipment were not reported, nor a source for the estimate.
The Russian author of Military Summary has been virulently attacked by the Seattle-based Rusian emigré, Andrei Martyanov, a competing milbologger who calls Military Summary one of a “number of major Russian media who started pointing out to all those military ‘experts’ (how’s Dima from the Military Bullshit Summary doing? Is he in Russia?) as effectively propaganda outlets for own enrichment on hype based on outright fantasies or being straight TSIPSO [Center for Information and Psychological Operations of Ukraine, a unit of the Ukrainian Special Forces] assets.”
Martyanov began claiming on August 7 that the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk was a trap set by the Russian General Staff. “Russians actually love to have them more because obviously it’s much more difficult to get those guys out of their concrete bunkers than when they are in the open…Obviously, in the times of the modern ISR [Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance] – and Russia has very advanced ISR – it was all anticipated.” At that time, Martyanov denied there was a “massive attack”; he claimed there was only a single brigade – no numbers.
A day later, reporting an Su-34 heavy bombardment in the Sumy region, Martyanov said “the Russian military detected a fat target–a concentration of personnel and their armor worthy of visit of this lovely instrument of hell. My today’s video about this and more is coming. Did the General Staff have a plan? It increasingly looks like.”
After ten days of fighting in Kursk, on August 16, Martyanov reported his verification by retrospection. “We can get now the clear picture…what was expected is happening now. The first expectation was that they would be sucked in, because it was planned by people who do not understand what modern operations are, and that they would be sucked into this tactical surprise…So once it wears off, it will end up as it is ending up with this total annihilation of every single significant force or group which was streaming through the border of Russia.”
Another eight days of fighting later, on August 24, Martyanov celebrated the 81st anniversary of the Red Army victory over the Germans at the Battle of Kursk, July 5 to August 23, 1943. That carefully planned tactical operation, and strategic victory, were being repeated now on a smaller scale in Kursk by the General Staff, Martyanov implied.
Martyanov is an exceptionalist of the Russian variety. Exceptionalism is an ideology of superiority based on fabricated racial, ethnic, religious, financial, or other characteristics, employing fascist methods extending to genocide in the Turkish-Armenian, British-Indian, German-Jewish, and Israeli-Palestinian cases. In the US there is no exception to American exceptionaliasm – not in the pro-war parties, nor in the anti-war opposition, nor in the professoriat. In Russia, exceptionalism is based on the military — Martyanov’s case — the Church, the oligarchs.
Russian exceptionalists believe it is impossible for them to be deceived, defrauded, or defeated. (For American exceptionalists, it is the same.) And so to the US side, the record of steady escalation in US-Ukrainian cross-border operations over the fifteen months since May 23, 2023, signifies success at asymmetrical or hybrid warfighting; at the same time, on the Russian side, the record signifies suicidal failure at terrorism. For the distinction which the Kremlin insists on drawing between “terrorism” and “war”, read this.
Source: https://acleddata.com/
On the map of the Russian border regions, this escalation has concentrated on Bryansk, Belgorod, and Kursk.
Source: https://acleddata.com/
As the Russian analysts struggle to explain what has happened at Kursk, they have largely ignored the history illustrated in this chart and this map. In order to blame the regional administrations and scapegoat the governors, as the Kremlin has encouraged, the record of repeated requests to put the regions on a war footing in advance – not an anti-terrorism operation after the event – has been censored, along with the record of Putin’s temporizing, procrastination, and refusal. For Putin’s comparable form in responding to high-casualty coalmine accidents in Kemerovo region and to coke and steel plant pollution in Chelyabinsk, both of them caused by oligarch supporters of the president, click to read this and this.
Because Martyanov is based in the US, he has used his military reports to imply political blame at the level of the civilian regional administrations. “The best equipped Ukrainian (practically all of it fresh NATO hardware) and motivated troops, and NATO generals who planned this catastrophe for them, covered part (about 11-12 kilometers) of what is called the security zone, which was not prepared (why, we will know in a due time–administration of Kursk Oblast has a lot to answer for)…”
The national politician closest to the war front has carefully reversed the scapegoating down the command line, and at the same time held the Kremlin to account for its insistence on the war as an anti-terrorist operation. This is Dmitri Rogozin – at one time the civilian minister in charge of the military-industrial complex, a potential presidential successor, and currently senator for Zaporozhye . According to Rogozin as early as August 7, “the transfer of responsibility for restoring order and legality in these territories to the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, which is headed by the FSB and which includes or involves all those who are necessary for the case, including the Ministry of Defense, is also a recognition of the fact that in the person of the Kiev regime we are dealing with terrorists, and not with the state. With all the consequences…”
By that last phrase Rogozin (right) meant that since the Kursk attack was a terrorist operation directed by terrorists in Kiev, the Russian anti- terrorist operation should extend to Kiev, Putin’s restrictive orders to the General Staff should be lifted, and the “terrorist regime” should be destroyed throughout the territory to the Polish, Romanian and Hungarian borders. “The situation in the world and in our country
has changed radically, and these decisions are urgently needed.” Rogozin was addressing Putin as the decision-maker.
“[Alexander] Syrsky is not a Ukrainian,” Rogozin said on August 11, referring to the Russian- born Ukrainian general staff chief. “He’s one of our traitors. Zelensky is also not a Ukrainian. He’s one of the Jewish traitors. They don’t feel sorry for Ukrainians. They’ll definitely throw them at us… Zelensky is threatening us with a series of terrorist attacks across the country, including the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. That’s how you should understand his words. If his threats are not military, but terrorist in nature, he positions himself as the leader of a state terrorist organization and is subject to liquidation. I hope that my logic is clear and obvious to those who should immediately make a decision to start planning an operation to eliminate Zelensky.”
This is as close as a national politician has come so far to reverse the logic of Putin’s proposals for Istanbul-II, and instead to empty the territory of its “terrorists” and their weapons to the full limits of the demilitarization and denazification goals of February 2022.
“Whoever is to blame on the Russian side for the invasion of Kursk,” comments a military source, “this is officially now a tar baby for the Ukrainians. They can’t afford to stay but they can’t afford to leave either. They should thank their lucky stars for Putin. It not for him, they’d have no place to leave for or return to.”
Reversing the operational logic of the anti-terrorism operation has a domestic political corollary which Rozhin admitted ruefully on August 24. “Many people are already talking about the need to use useful organizational solutions of the Stalinist period, especially in terms of mobilizing the country and society in war conditions, starting with the former de-stalinizer [Dmitri] Medvedev, who now scares the directors of defense factories with Stalin’s letters from the Second World War. The reason for this is simple — referring to the previous historical experience, in the 20th century, in terms of decisions in a difficult period for the country, there is no one to turn to except Stalin. Well, not to Gorbachev nor to Nicholas II.”
For “organizational solutions of the Stalinist period”, read the end of the Russian oligarchy.
An oligarch source in Moscow denies this. “The oligarchs are having the best time in the last two decades inside Russia,” the source says. “None of them wants to leave for the west and no one is asking Putin to make any compromise with the US. Everyone understands the money is not coming back; they have written off their London, their Sardinia properties. Their children are fine in the US and UK with their new nationalities, but they were not going to return anyway. So no, there is no real pressure from oligarchs on Putin for a war settlement. But everyone wants some sanctions softened.”
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