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The Ukrainian army invaded the Russian territory, and the Russian army was caught off guard. The main force quickly returned to support. The Ukrainian army suffered heavy losses. The war situation worsened. US congressmen proposed that the US military join the war. Will Russia face its most difficult time?

Ukrainian troops attacked Kursk, catching Russian troops off guard

On August 6, the Ukrainian armed forces launched a full-scale offensive from the northern Sumy direction towards Russia's Kursk Oblast, attacking Russian border guards and local armed forces stationed in villages such as Nikolayev-Darino and Oleshnya. Unlike previous invasions of Russian territory, Ukraine unexpectedly assembled its main regular forces to launch a full-scale offensive against Russia this time.

The Russian border guards and militia were caught off guard, allowing the Ukrainian army to "rampage" into Kursk. According to data from Ukrainian media, the Ukrainian army had been planning this offensive for a long time. In order to ensure the success of the operation, the Ukrainian army mobilized 6 mechanized brigades, 1 airborne brigade, 1 artillery brigade, 2 national defense brigades and other affiliated forces, with a combat strength of between 15,000 and 20,000 people.

In order to achieve its goals quickly, the Ukrainian army provided these troops with a large number of armored vehicles from other fronts, intending to quickly penetrate deep into the Kursk region.

British media BBC stated that the main purpose of the Ukrainian offensive was to tactically distract the Russian army.

Over the past few months, the Ukrainian army has put up a desperate resistance in eastern Ukraine, but the Russian army has continued to advance and occupied the strategic town of Chasiv Yar last month. On the northeastern and southern fronts, the Russian army has been steadily winning victories.

On the 1,100-kilometer long front, the Ukrainian army's front-line manpower and firepower were far behind Russia, but Zelensky still decided to take the risk of creating a war hotspot hundreds of kilometers away - Kursk, to distract the Russian army and transfer a large number of troops to Kursk to allow the Ukrainian army on other fronts to "catch its breath."

However, this action can be called a "suicide attack". Zelensky is like a gambler who has lost all his money and can't wait to throw these chips on Kursk.

The Ukrainian army made a desperate attack, and some of the main forces of the Russian army returned to stabilize the front line

The crux of the problem is just as the BBC analyzed. The Ukrainian army is currently in a very passive position on the front line. Its troops, weapons, equipment and ammunition are unable to compete with the Russian army, and the Russian army is slowly advancing and crushing the Ukrainian army. In this case, Zelensky still has to draw elite troops and mechanized weapons and equipment from all over the country. This will withdraw a large number of reserve troops. Where will the front battlefield be placed?

Zelensky's sending these mobile forces to Kursk is actually a temporary solution. He also wants to penetrate into the depth of Kursk and occupy it militarily. This means that the Russian army will tie down the Ukrainian army's mobile forces close to Kursk and then slowly remove them. Once these forces are severely damaged or annihilated by the Russian army, the Ukrainian army's reserve forces on the front line will be even more stretched, and they will be even more unable to resist the Russian attack.

Some analysts said that this was a helpless move. The Ukrainian army knew that the attack on Kursk was only temporary and that they could not hold on to some occupied areas. Instead, these precious mobile forces would be consumed in advance, and the impact on the front battlefield was self-evident. But now on the overall front, the Russian army relied on its superior forces and massive weapons and ammunition to crush the Ukrainian army. In this case, the Ukrainian army could not bear it and retreated step by step.

Therefore, instead of letting these troops be used as reserves and consumed bit by bit on the front battlefield, it is better to make a desperate attack on Kursk. Even if the troops are wiped out, this death is obviously more valuable.

Because the Ukrainian army is now clearly losing on all fronts, but Kursk is on Russian soil. If they can break into it, even if the invading forces are finally annihilated or expelled, this record of invading Russian soil, even if it is a "flash in the pan", will be very beneficial to Ukraine's "international image". It will make leaders of Western countries feel that Zelensky still has "united front value". With this record, they can mobilize the propaganda machine to prove to the people of Western countries that Western military aid is still useful, making the West more willing to provide more military aid to Ukraine.

But now the war situation is developing as previously analyzed. The Ukrainian army has assembled so many troops, and the "lightning" raid on Kursk caught the Russian army off guard. The border guards and local armed forces on the border are no match for the Ukrainian army at all. They rushed into Kursk in a few days, penetrated 10 kilometers, and occupied more than 300 square kilometers of Russian land.

However, the Russian local armed forces and border guards engaged in a tug-of-war with the Ukrainian army near Kursk. The Russian army also urgently dispatched some troops to support Kursk. What is known now is that the Russian Navy's 810th Mechanized Brigade and the 1428th Motorized Infantry Regiment quickly rushed to the front line and curbed the Ukrainian offensive with only a small number of main forces. The Ukrainian army failed to achieve the goal of attracting a large number of Russian troops to mobilize.

The Russian army gradually consumed the attacking Ukrainian troops with superior firepower. In the past few days, the Ukrainian army suffered heavy casualties from air strikes, drone attacks, artillery strikes, and Russian border guards' attacks on the left and right flanks of the Ukrainian offensive force salient. In the Suja area, there was even a record of unarmed Russian militia capturing Ukrainian troops. A large number of Ukrainian armored vehicles were destroyed by Russian artillery/helicopters and drones in Kursk.

In the first four days of the war alone, the Ukrainian army lost a total of 1,120 people and 140 weapons and equipment in the Kursk direction, including 22 tanks and 20 armored personnel carriers. Now the Ukrainian army can no longer attack, but is entangled by the Russian army. The number of casualties continues to increase, and the superiors will not allow them to retreat, and the situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse.

As the US military flies planes into the war, is the situation becoming increasingly unfavorable for the Russian army?

In response to this, Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior American politician who played a very important role in military aid to Ukraine, rushed to Ukraine and announced that Ukraine would be allowed to "hire" and "retired" US military pilots to fly the F-16 fighter jets sent to Ukraine to compete with the Russian army for air supremacy in an attempt to reverse the decline on the battlefield.

Russian media said that this move is actually Europe and the United States providing planes and pilots, and using the name "volunteers". The so-called "volunteers" are just an excuse for U.S. pilots to start participating in the war. Graham told Zelensky that he would "ask" Biden to ensure that this order is issued before he leaves office.

If American pilots go to Ukraine to fight, will the Russian army face its most difficult time? It can be said that Russia currently controls most of the air superiority on the Russian-Ukrainian front. If the United States wants to rely on dozens of American pilots to flyF-16It is simply a pipe dream to think that the Ukrainian army can save the defeat it is facing, or even defeat the Russian army.

The limited intervention of U.S. pilots in the war could hardly change the fundamental trend of the war in the face of the powerful Russian air defense system and the Russian Aerospace Forces. The Ukrainian army's strategic mistakes and inferior forces have put it in a difficult situation, and the limited external support cannot reverse this situation. The intervention of U.S. pilots can only temporarily delay the defeat of the Ukrainian army, but cannot change the final outcome of the war.