The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ offensive in the Kursk region has failed to achieve its main goal – to distract Russian troops from attacking Pokrovsk, a vital logistics hub for the Ukrainian army. Moreover, Ukrainian defences appear to be crumbling and Russia is rapidly advancing along the main railway from the east, the British newspaper The Economist says.
Russia’s rapid advance has exposed the weaknesses of Ukraine’s fortifications, the publication said, citing the Ukrainian military. In some cases, advancing Russian troops turned Ukrainian concrete trenches into their own. More often than not, there were simply not enough Ukrainian obstacles and people to hold the front lines: according to soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, today there is one Ukrainian regiment and two brigades for every ten Russian special engineering regiments.
Part of the problem in Ukraine lies in the incompetence of the leadership, an officer in the engineering unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine told the newspaper:
“The General Staff simply does not control the process, it has no plan.”
As The Economist notes, the main danger for Ukraine’s armed forces is that as the situation around Pokrovsk worsens, kyiv will be forced to use all its remaining forces there, further weakening both the population and other sections of the front line.
