SITREP 1/5/25: Ukraine Launches Final Bargaining-Chip Offensive in Kursk

Ukrainian forces launched a new awaited offensive on the Kursk region, which was to be timed with the run up to Trump’s inauguration. The desperate offensive is meant to make sure the dwindling Kursk salient remains at least up until Trump is able to ‘negotiate’ with Putin, so that Zelensky still has Kursk as a “bargaining chip” in those negotiations.

As such, Russian forces have been anticipating a move somewhere in the region for a few weeks now. The only danger is that there is some possibility this opening is still just a diversion for a larger move in another direction, such as Bryansk, toward Belgorod, or even on the Zaporozhye line.

That’s because today’s action saw what’s estimated to be two battalions or so. There are mixed reports about potentially the 95th, 92nd, 22nd, and 82nd brigades participating, as well as the 225th Special Battalion. Other reports claimed 36th and 47th as well, although it’s likely just small elements and detachments of the above, if at all.

Footage of the columns advancing with Russian response fire and drone destruction of the Ukrainian armor:

The assault column came out of Sudzha toward Berdin in an attempt to expand the bridgehead and keep Russians from collapsing the pocket on the AFU’s Sudzha HQ-stronghold:

Here’s a video from Akhmat’s “Aida” Battalion operating in Kursk during today’s assault:

Note that at a certain point the commander says we have four losses and they have four losses—this is an AI mistranslation, he actually said our unit destroyed four AFU units and another neighboring Russian unit destroyed an additional four.

Having anticipated this attack, Russian forces apparently also prepared an attack thrust of their own in other areas of Kursk in order to cut the Ukrainians off or simply catch them off guard. Thus there were reports of a Russian assault from the Malaya Loknaya, Sverlikovo, and Leonidovka directions, though there’s no further information at this time.

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦Russian army in Kursk region advances on Malaya Loknya, Sverdlikovo and Leonidovka, - DeepState

The Ukrainian assault did manage to embed troops in and around parts of Berdin, so they did capture a small slice of new territory with the incursion—but for now Russian forces claim they have stranded the AFU troops by destroying their armor and are in the process of eliminating the remaining stragglers.

A day prior to this, Russian forces had several successes including capturing the remainder of Kurakhovo. The flag was geolocated being placed here:

🇺🇦🇷🇺 Elite special forces of the Southern Military District, in particular fighters of the 346th special forces brigade "Grachi", together with units of the 5th separate guards motorized rifle brigade, installed the Russian flag on the extreme western outskirts of the village of Kurakhovo. This operation was another success in the ongoing offensive of Russian troops in this section of Ukrainian territory. Highly professional special forces played a decisive role in capturing an important strategic facility.

Which is here:

In fact the wider view shows Kurakhove region has been all but cinched up:

Toretsk has also now been almost entirely captured, with just a small segment to the north left:

And there were advances in Chasov Yar as well, with much of the city likewise behind Russian forces:

They’ve also expanded territory around Pokrovsk’s southern and western flanks, with Ukrainian forces said to have constructed fortifications around the city as follows:

New articles continue coming to terms with Ukraine’s impending defeat, as the West slowly realizes that Trump will not be able to ‘magically’ end the war without giving Russia all of its demands, which is a complete non-starter for Zelensky:

A new Washington Post article gives an interesting figure:

It states that Zelensky wanted 500k total troops drafted in 500k but ended up only drafting 200k. The reason that’s interesting is because we now know from several Ukrainian officials that Ukraine is at best breaking even and at worst experiencing a net loss in troop totals per month. Given that 200k were brought in as replacements in 2024, we can only assume this represents the AFU’s losses for the year.

Two weeks ago Belousov announced Ukraine’s total “killed and wounded” casualties for the year 2024 as 560,000. That would put strictly killed at something like 120-180k, which is not far from the 200k conscription figure above. Being charitable, let’s say that 200k is killed and disabled, which would put strictly killed at 100k. That would be 8,333 KIA per month or 277 per day, which is pretty much in the vicinity of where I’ve got AFU’s KIA pegged. I’ve said several articles ago I believe Russian KIA to be anywhere between 100-150 per day, sometimes higher, with Ukrainian being 250-400, give or take. MediaZona seems to roughly agree as their estimated death count for Russian forces was 5,500 for December last I checked, which averages to about 183 per day.

Recall that there are alternative estimates for Ukraine’s losses which are far higher, like this recently published one:

It claims a total of ~2 million casualties since the start of the war, with 920k of them being dead or disabled.

In fact, from the same WaPo article quoted above, we have the next paragraph:

Well, judge for yourself.

Taras goes on to remark that the current situation is even worse than February 2022 for Ukraine:

“Let’s be honest, the situation now is worse than at the start of the full-scale invasion,” said 33-year-old Taras, a captain and company commander in the 35th brigade. “What can we negotiate now? We can only nod our heads and agree to their demands, and what they will demand is obviously going to be something that we don’t like.”

They do make an interesting description of Russia’s ‘slow-drip’ strategy:

Moving in smaller groups on foot, the most-used tactic, also allows the Russians to covertly build up forces one or two people at a time before their next attack. Armored vehicles are rarely used in offensives anymore, soldiers said.

“You think everything is all right because you haven’t seen a lot of the enemy and then suddenly 10 people run out of one basement,” said Taras, the deputy commander fighting near Pokrovsk. “That happened to us recently. Where did they come from?”

Of course, they still mention the canard of “heavy Russian losses” in the article, but have you ever wondered why in every Ukrainian interview, the AFU soldiers mention their own high losses, yet in equivalent Russian interviews Russian soldiers virtually never mention much losses at all, or at least not particularly high ones? Does one actually suppose that Ukrainian governmental strictures are somehow “freer” and Ukraine has more “freedom” in this regard than Putin’s Russia? It’s a very telling point of fact.

How’s this final admission from the same article?

https://archive.ph/9tVn0

Either way, even Russian SVR now states that Ukraine is preparing to lower mobilization age, which means it may very well finally happen soon. The likely impetus remains a failure of Trump’s peace talks—which Zelensky is holding out for—which will allow Yermak and his puppet to blame the mobilization on the US’ “betrayal” to take heat off themselves.

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An impressive new video comes by way of the Russian 5th Brigade, of the DPR’s ex-1st Army Corps, of the 51st CAA of the Southern Military District.

A four-unit assault formation from the 5th Brigade consisting of one heavy tank with three IFVs rolled into Elizavetovka from the now-captured Vozdvizhenka—just east of Pokrovsk:

Upon entering the village they suddenly ran face-first into two Ukrainian tanks, one of which I have seen identified as a T-64. I will assume both were T-64s. A high-noon standoff ensues with both sides’ tanks firing on each other, and the Russian one destroying his Ukrainian foe while the remaining Ukrainian tank flees. The fleeing tank is then hit by Russian drones soon after.

The remarkable video:

‼️🇷🇺🎖 Heroic breakthrough near Pokrovsk: Russian tank and 3 IFVs head-on against Ukrainian tanks - battle details

▪️Russian troops are developing an offensive east of Mirnograd. After taking the village of Vozdvizhenka, ours entered Yelizavetovka. A Russian column broke into the village, a battle is underway, enemy resources were written off during the day.

▪️Near Yelizavetovka, our tank and 3 infantry fighting vehicles collided with two Ukrainian Armed Forces tanks at a “dagger” distance of 50 meters.

▪️The tank of the 5th brigade hit the Ukrainian tank point-blank three times, it hit ours twice, but missed.

▪️With the fourth shot, the Russian tank penetrated the armor of the enemy tank and then finished it off.

▪️The second tank of the Ukrainian Armed Forces hid behind the smoke of the burning Ukrainian tank and crawled away.

▪️Our infantry fighting vehicles emerged from under the tank's protection, and troops landed from them in Yelizavetovka and secured their positions.

At the 1:00 mark of the video the Russian tank fires and misses, but hits the dirt in front of the Ukrainian tanks, causing a plume of smoke that blocks their views. One wonders if this was ‘nerves’ or a deliberate quick shot to blind them, perhaps after realizing it would take longer to aim the gun onto the enemy tank than to hit the trigger on a barrel which may have already been pointing toward the ground there.

Either way, it worked and the Ukrainian tanks panic and begin backing up. At 1:09 both fire and seem to miss again due to the smoke. We’re already three shots in at point blank range and no one appears to have hit anyone. At 1:23 the Russian tank fires again and seems to again miss and hit behind the first tank, or possibly grazingly hits it. It’s hard to tell for certain, and a small wisp of white smoke does appear to attest to a possible hit. Another shot at 1:34 however finally hits the front of the Ukrainian tank’s armor—the autoloader on the Russian tank is now working at exactly 10 second intervals, which is much slower than the 6-7second optimal speed most T-72, T-80, and T-90s can do.

But what’s remarkable is at 1:36 the Ukrainian tank returns fire and appears to even potentially hit the Russian tank with a grazing shot. If you look closely you see the tell-tale wisp of white smoke indicating a possible hit on the defensive smoke charges on the turret. The shot explodes behind the Russian tank so it could have grazed off—or perhaps is a miss, it’s hard to tell.

But the final few shots from the Russian tank finally settles matters and finishes off the Ukrainian one. But one can see real modern war is not like video games, things are imperfect and sometimes many shots are needed to finish off the foe. The Russian tank even appears to be hit by something else at 2:06, either a drone or an RPG fired from near the Ukrainian tank, since there is a muzzle flash of sorts visible. But it seems to shrug the hit off with only another smoke canister destroyed.

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Lastly, for those who haven’t followed the incredible story of Yakut warrior Andrey “Tuta” Gregoriev, I wanted to have a centralized place to put all the links for posterity and those interested.

‘Tuta’ was part of the Russian 39th Brigade based in Sakhalin assaulting the village of Trudovoye, just south of Kurakhove here:

Note Trudovoye is now captured, but the events actually occurred in late November, when the village was still in the gray zone.

Tuta was ordered by his command to proceed on a motorcycle with another partner to plant a flag in the village. This has generated some controversy, like the following:

Sure, on first impression it may seem like this proves that force density is low and some ‘corrupt’ Russian commanders are sending troops on superficial suicide missions. But in reality, the village was in a gray zone, and a two-man team on a propaganda/scout mission is not totally uncalled for. Placing flags has more psychological importance in war than people on the sidelines give credit for; it’s generally frowned upon when the AFU sends dozens of men to their death for it like in Khrynki.

In this case it may have been a reasonable mission. If you listen to Tuta’s full length interview, you’ll note he conducted all sorts of rear sabotage and killed something like a dozen total AFU before he was done with his remarkable week-long spree behind enemy lines.

For those interested, the full highly graphic video of the fight is here: Video.
A newly released, even more graphic drone view of the same fight is here: Video.
And the full hour-long interview with the hero is here: Video.

Some Ukrainian channels allege that this was the AFU soldier defeated by the Yakut:

Many have romanticized the fight and the now-famous ‘brotherly’ exchange between the two warriors at the end, but in truth it was mostly just survival and primal forces at work. The Yakut soldier even admits in the full interview he later liquidated a three-man AFU mortar team, including the commander who tried to surrender; when you’re alone behind enemy lines, you don’t have the luxury of honor and chivalry—a ‘prisoner’ would just be a dangerous burden for your journey back to friendly territory.

A last important lesson: many Western propagandists continue parading the spurious notion that Russian forces use the age-old “Soviet-style centralized command”. In reality, Gregoriev’s exploits prove that Russian units operate with much more flexible initiative than their NATO counterparts. He was given leeway for all kinds of self-starting initiative when behind the lines, including sabotaging an AFU ammo depot, fuel warehouse, mortar unit, as well as reconnoitering various valuable military objects.

In fact the sheer know-how of the common Russian soldier was astounding, given his story. At one point he casually remarks how he Macgyver’d a C4 charge to blow the enemy warehouse on the fly, all because they were taught to do so in training, despite the fact he’s not even in any kind of special sapper or engineering battalion.

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A few last items:

A report about the utter low quality of troops being press-ganged into the AFU:

A company commander of the 78th Airborne Assault Regiment of the AFU reported the low quality of conscripts arriving from the CVMP. According to him, his company received a drug addict on substitution therapy, two non-conscripts, a person with a mental disorder, a person with hepatitis and two with heart disease, one of whom can barely stand on his feet, and the second of whom almost died and ended up in the hospital. At the same time, as the officer noted, military commissariats do not draft successful healthy businessmen and strong young men of athletic physique, who can be found at various rallies

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An addendum to add for last time when we spoke about Ukraine’s tactic for baiting Russian air defenses into shooting down civilian airliners or other military craft—I had found this snippet saved long ago which offers one piece of evidence for the Ukrainian saboteur tactic:

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A new video showing a Ukrainian Su-25 utilizing the French AASM Hammer missiles against Russian forces:

You can see the “lofting” tactic employed which we covered here many times long ago, where the plane flies low to avoid radar then briefly shoots up to as high an altitude as possible to gain distance on the missile, before dropping back down under radar coverage.

Intrepid viewers geolocated the plane from the footage, which is just over Konstantinovka:

That’s fairly ballsy given that it’s only 10-15km or so from the frontline. In fact, we know Russian planes operate nearby given the famous S-70 Ohotnik incident, where the experimental drone fell somewhere over Konstantinovka, which means its wingman Su-57 was operating very close to the town.

Thus it shows the lofting strategy works—at least at times—based on luck, since there’s only a window of a few seconds to detect the Ukrainian plane and launch a missile if Russian assets are in the area.

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Lastly, a remarkable video from 2015 where Sergey Dorenko makes a number of prophetic predictions about a most intense European war in the year 2025 and beyond:

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