A picturesque church in Pogrebki, a village in Kursk Oblast in western Russia, overlooks a chaotic battlefield. Ukrainian forces are determined to fight their way past St. Michael’s Church. Russian forces are determined to prevent them.
Armored vehicles blast away with their autocannons. Drones drop bombs. Infantry cower in basements.
The war that has raged around St. Michael’s Church in recent days is indicative of the general trend in Kursk: the Russians are fighting to expel the Ukrainians from a 250-square-mile salient they dug into the oblast in August, and the Ukrainians are fighting back. with counterattacks.
The fighting is brutal. Gains and losses by either side are measured in yards.
The war around St. Michael’s Church had dragged on for about a day when, on Friday or shortly before, a U. S. -made Bradley M-2 infantry fighting vehicle, likely belonging to Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade, drove toward the church and opened fire with its 25-millimeter autocannon.
As the one-pound shells exploded, Russian soldiers took shelter in the church’s basement. “The infantry of the armed forces of Ukraine is trying to finish off our fighters,” one Russian blogger reported.
The blogger piously invoked the Bible’s book of Isaiah. Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with the right hand of My righteousness.
There is nothing fair about the fighting in Kursk, where 20,000 Ukrainians face 60,000 Russians and North Koreans. The latter would have liked to remove the safety pins from their grenades rather than surrender.
Omnipresent drones have made it incredibly dangerous for armored vehicles—especially Russian armored vehicles—to leave concealment. So the infantry often attack on foot, and usually die in large numbers.
Four hundred Russians were killed and wounded in one recent assault. Two hundred North Koreans fell in an earlier attack. An attempt by a Ukrainian air assault brigade to extend the Kursk front line around the village of Berdin ran afoul of Russian fiber-optic drones. The brigade retreated, leaving behind its frozen dead.
The M-2 that arrived at Pogrebki was the exception to the rule: an armored vehicle whose crew was willing to threaten close combat in the open field despite all the drones buzzing overhead.
The crew’s luck held until it didn’t. A drone from the Russian 34th Motor Rifle Brigade lobbed a grenade onto the 33-ton Bradley, just avoiding the vehicle’s anti-drone netting. The grenade exploded, seemingly damaging the M-2’s autocannon. The strike “put to flight” the vehicle, another Russian blogger wrote.
More than half of Pogrebki is under Russian control, the same blogger claimed. At the same time, the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies insisted Ukrainian forces had “advanced on the northern outskirts” of the village, around where the Church of Saint Michael towers.
It’s hard to know who’s right, and it’s worth noting the major analysts still place Pogrebki in the gray zone between Russian and Ukrainian lines. It’s the same contested status Pogrebki has held since a Russian marine brigade first attacked Ukrainian troops in the settlement back in November.
The first two months of skirmishing in Pogrebki cost the Russians the better part of two battalions, each nominally with 400 people. There’s no reason to believe the current fighting is any less bloody. “War as it is,” the first blogger philosophized.
One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.
Our network aims to connect others through open and thoughtful conversations. We need our readers to share their perspectives and exchange concepts and facts in one space.
In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site’s Terms of Service. We’ve summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.
Your message will be rejected if we notice that it appears to contain:
User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:
So, how can you be a power user?
Thank you for reading our Community Standards. Read the full list of posting regulations discovered in our site’s Terms of Use.