On May 10, 2024, Russian invaders launched a large-scale offensive operation in the Kharkov direction. However, it began earlier than the enemy planned, since the Ukrainian military was actually ahead of the enemy in deploying reserves along the border – in the Sumy, Kharkov, and Volchanskaya areas.
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Alexander Syrsky spoke about this in an interview with TSN Week.
According to Syrsky, the enemy did not expect that Ukraine had brigades put into reserve to restore combat effectiveness – the enemy believed that there were no reserves.
They also monitor and knew, according to our information, that we have no reserves, that our situation is critical after Avdievka,” he noted.
Syrsky noted that:
- The Russians planned to prepare an offensive group based on two corps;
- one of these corps should constitute the most striking force of the offensive group – this is the 44th corps. It was formed from brigades that had significant experience and on the basis of these units other formations were formed, which were undergoing training during this period; the preparations were supposed to be completed by June 1, and after this date the Russians planned to launch an offensive in two strategic directions – Kharkov and Sumy – with a powerful group.
- “When we began to withdraw our units and take up defensive positions along the border, the enemy decided to attack with all his forces,” said Syrsky. “It was about 43 thousand deployed in the Belgorod area in the Kharkov direction, and 26 thousand in the Sumy direction.”
These battles began with an offensive, in which the enemy had partial success in the Liptsev area, where he managed to advance up to 10 km, after which he was stopped in a counter battle. Volchansk actually immediately began to suffer heavy losses.
Therefore, the enemy began to introduce reserves and then systematically began to overturn those units that were planned before the offensive literally two or three days later in the Sumy direction – they began to overturn them towards the Kharkov direction,” Syrsky noted.
But those reserves also turned out to be insufficient. Then they transferred units partially from the Kupyansky direction and thus this offensive was not successful,” he added.
Syrsky noted that in some directions the enemy had to retreat, in others he actually stopped at the state border line, and in the Volchansk region fighting has been going on for a long time without any success on the part of the enemy, despite the fact that he is suffering heavy losses.
In this situation, Ukraine had to look for some solution to the problem that distracted the enemy’s actions, forcing him to withdraw some of his forces from the main directions and neutralize the threat in new areas of the offensive.
And then, during a detailed analysis of the creation of enemy groupings and the concentration of his troops, a weak point was found precisely in the Kursk direction,” Syrsky noted.
According to him, it was possible to withdraw three brigades of air assault troops to the Kursk region, as well as several more brigades that were restoring combat capability, and they were completed.
Syrsky noted that the Kursk operation is an unprecedented case when the aggressor country was forced to defend itself on its territory, overthrow forces in other directions and create a group of 67 thousand people. faces of the best parts.
In total, as a result of the Kursk operation, 255 km of active front were added.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.