The Russian military command had anticipated a Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region and had been preparing plans for months to prevent it, according to a set of documents the Ukrainian military says it seized from abandoned positions in Kursk.
The information makes the disorganization shown by Russian forces in the face of the Ukrainian attack in early August even more shameful. Shared with The Guardian, the documents also reveal concerns about morale in the ranks of Kursk, including the suicide of a front-line soldier who was reportedly in a “state of depression due to his service in” the Russian army.
Russian unit commanders are instructed to ensure that soldiers consume state media on a daily basis in order to maintain their “psychological state.”
The documents bear the hallmarks of official Russian military communications, but The Guardian has been unable to verify their authenticity. The British newspaper met with the Ukrainian special operations team that took charge of them in late August. Hours earlier, they had returned from Russian territory, where they said they had stolen documents from the Interior Ministry, the FSB and the Russian military from buildings in the Kursk region. They then shared a selection of the documents for The Guardian to view and photograph.
Some of the documents are printed orders that were distributed to various units. Others are handwritten notes about events that occurred or concerns about certain positions. The oldest date back to late 2023 and the most recent just six weeks before August 6, the date the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region began.
The documents come mostly from units of the 488th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the Russian Federation, including the second company of its 17th battalion.
While very few people were aware of these plans, the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk surprised kyiv’s Western partners and many in Ukraine’s upper echelons. But in Russian military documents, there are months of warnings about a possible incursion into the region and a possible occupation of Sudzha, the town of 5,000 people that has been under Ukrainian control for more than a month.
A document dated January 4 refers to the “possibility of an advance on the state border” by Ukrainian armed groups and orders increased preparation to repel any attack. On February 19, unit commanders were warned of Ukrainian plans for “a rapid advance from the Sumy region into Russian territory, to a depth of up to 80 kilometers, to establish a four-day “corridor” before the arrival of Russian army armored vehicles.” leading units of the Ukrainian army.
In preparation for a Ukrainian cross-border attack, units located on the border were ordered in mid-March to strengthen defensive lines and “organize additional exercises for the leadership of units and strongpoints in connection with the proper organization of defenses.”
In mid-June, a more specific warning was issued about Ukrainian plans “in the Yunakivka-Sudzha direction, with the aim of bringing Sudzha under their control,” as indeed happened in August. They also predicted that Ukraine would attempt to destroy a bridge over the Seym River in order to disrupt the Russian supply line in the region, which did indeed happen. That June document lamented that Russian units on the front were “only 60-70% full, on average, and composed mainly of poorly trained soldiers.”
On August 6, the Ukrainian attack broke out and many Russian soldiers abandoned their positions. Within a week, Ukraine had taken full control of Sudzha. “They fled without even evacuating or destroying their documents,” said a member of the Ukrainian special operations team that took them away.
Ukrainian forces captured hundreds of soldiers during the chaotic Russian retreat. Most of those captured were recruits who are not usually part of the front lines of fighting. The parents of a recruit from the second company, who appears in the documents, recorded a tearful video in August asking Russian authorities to include their son Vadim Kopylov, 22, who is being held prisoner near Sudzha, in a prisoner exchange.
The documents offer a glimpse into the tactics Russia has deployed over the past year. In one instance, it involves creating trenches and decoy positions to confuse Ukrainian reconnaissance drones. “Mock-ups of tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery launchers, as well as mannequins of soldiers, are to be created and moved periodically,” one order states.
A few soldiers should be sent to the decoy positions to light fires at night and march with torches, the order added, and Russia should simulate radio conversations over the decoy positions in an attempt to intercept these communications.
It is unclear whether the Russian military ever created these decoy positions. Members of a Ukrainian unit that has been using reconnaissance drones in the area in recent weeks told the Guardian they had seen no signs of their existence.
The March documents refer to the growing number of incidents involving sabotage groups composed of Ukrainians dressed in Russian uniforms to infiltrate behind the lines. “To prevent the enemy’s infiltration into our combat formations, commanders should implement the use of identification markers of the n6 variant, made of 8-centimeter-wide materials, fixed with invisible adhesive tape,” the order of the month reads.
In the dry and convoluted official language, one can read signs of concern about serious morale problems at the front. “With regard to suicides, the analysis of the current situation shows that the issue of the death of servicemen as a result of suicide incidents remains tense,” says a document recounting an incident that appears to have occurred on January 20, 2024, when a recruit entered the summer washing area of a guard post and shot himself in the abdomen.
“The investigation into the incident determined that the cause of suicide and death was a nervous and psychological crisis, caused by a prolonged state of depression due to his service in the Russian army,” the handwritten report said.
To prevent further incidents of this type, unit commanders have been instructed to identify soldiers who are “mentally unprepared to fulfill their obligations or who are prone to abnormal behavior, to organize their reassignment and transfer to medical centers.”
An undated typewritten document contains further instructions for maintaining high morale: Soldiers are to receive political instruction for five to 10 minutes a day, plus one hour a week, with the aim of “maintaining and elevating the psychological, moral and political condition of the army personnel.”
