It was a bloodbath for the Russians, but Russian forces should not be expected to stop attacking, wrote Forbes magazine, describing the failed Russian attack that was supposed to have taken place on Thursday in Russia's Kursk region. The Ukrainians entered it three months ago, and Moscow has since been trying unsuccessfully to regain the territory by sending tens of thousands of soldiers.
On Thursday, Forbes described one of the heaviest clashes between Russian and Korean forces against the Ukrainian army in the Kursk Oblast, which was to have taken place earlier in the day. The American magazine reminded that on this stage the fight includes, among others: Russian 810th Marine Brigade. Its soldiers recently received 40 BTR-82 wheeled armored personnel carriers to compensate for the losses incurred during the previous unsuccessful attempts to displace the Ukrainian forces from their positions.
“Bloodbath for Russians”
On Thursday, the Russians attacked the Ukrainians in the Kursk Oblast again using 14 BTR-82 transporters. However, the attack failed, and ten of these transports were destroyed, damaged or abandoned. The 17-ton machines can fit up to 10 soldiers, which means 810. the brigade could have lost up to 140 people, Forbes noted.
As he stated, “The Kremlin, trying to regain control over the Kursk Oblast, may suffer huge losses, but only if there is a real prospect of Donald Trump's peace plan being translated into reality.” “It was a bloodbath for the Russians, but we should not expect that Russian forces will stop attacking,” it said.
Trump's promise
According to Forbes, Russian politics, after 33 months of armed invasion of Ukraine, is now in an uncertain state because the Republican candidate won the presidential election in the United States, he wrote. He recalled that Donald Trump promised to “end the war” in Ukraine before his inauguration in January next year.
According to previous findings by the American Wall Street Journal, this plan is to “freeze the conflict on the current front line and create a demilitarized zone.” This zone would stretch along the entire front line, 1,300 km long.
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Footage purporting to show North Korean soldiers in the Kursk Oblast in Russia Anton Herashchenko/Twitter
The current front line runs through southern and eastern Ukraine, also heading towards the Kursk Oblast in Russia, where Ukrainian forces launched an offensive in early August this year. “If Trump's plan actually works, Russia would be forced to give Ukraine 435 square kilometers of its territory in exchange for about 20 percent of Ukraine,” Forbes wrote.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, as previously reported by the media in Kiev, demanded from the commanders that the Ukrainian forces be pushed out by October 1. However, fighting is still ongoing in the border region, where the Russians are supported by North Korean troops transferred to the region.
Trump's peace proposal
Forbes' Ukrainian interlocutors said that Trump's alleged peace proposal is “naive” and that Russia and North Korea may send troops and equipment to the Kursk region in an attempt to create conditions for a truce that may never come.
– Our 41st brigade has been fighting in this sector from the very beginning, and one of the most important areas for us is the city of Suja – said Kyrył Sazonav, a political scientist and soldier of the Ukrainian armed forces, quoted by the UNIAN agency. As he stated, about 20,000 Russian soldiers have already been killed in the border region, out of 55,000 sent to this direction. According to Sazonav, “against this background,” three or five thousand North Korean soldiers are “a negligible number.”
The military official said that “currently, the Kursk Oblast is a problem and his greatest failure in Putin's eyes.” As Sazonav explained, Putin would like to show Trump that “the special military operation (the propaganda term for armed invasion – editor) is going according to plan, that he is winning in Ukraine and that the war can be ended on Russian terms.” – But Trump will just laugh at it, Sazonav said.
Main photo source: Territorial Defense Forces South/Facebook