A Russian general dismantled a border-protection group not long before Ukraine attacked, report says

A Russian general disbanded a group charged with protecting Kursk’s borders months before Ukraine’s surprise incursion, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unnamed official in Russia’s security services.

Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin was appointed commander of the Leningrad Military District in May and was in charge of overseeing security in the Kursk region.

Lapin presided over the dissolution of an interagency council consisting of military personnel and local and regional security officials that would have coordinated a response to Ukraine’s incursion this month.

According to the official, Lapin said that Russia’s military had the strength and resources to defend the border on its own.

It’s unclear how effective the agency’s response would have been to Ukraine’s surprise attack, per the outlet. But without it, Russia has definitely struggled to push back Ukraine’s forces.

Ukraine caught Russia — as well as its Western allies — off guard on August 6 by launching a surprise attack on the Kursk border region, grabbing around 386 miles of territory in a matter of days.

In the past two weeks, Ukraine says its forces have captured as much territory as Russia has this year, and destroyed at least two bridges, cutting off Russian soldiers from supplies and consolidating Ukraine’s grasp over the area.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said his forces had pushed Russian soldiers back up to 22 miles into Russia, and had captured 99 settlements.

B-17 couldn’t independently verify these numbers.

Geolocated footage shared by military observers on Tuesday showed Ukrainian forces reaching an area 12 miles inside the country.

Russia, meanwhile, has struggled to respond quickly and effectively to the attack, in part due to its complex military structures and a lack of contingency plans.

It’s also been forced to divert troops from the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

While the incursion — now in its third week — appears to be making advances in Kursk, it could easily backfire on Ukraine.

A Ukrainian commander told the Financial Times this week that Russian soldiers were making advances in eastern Ukraine due to ammunition being redirected for military operations in Kursk, forcing his soldiers to ration cannon shells.

According to Matthew Savill, military sciences director at the Royal United Services Institute, manpower is the main risk for Ukraine.

If Ukrainian forces try to hold Kursk in the long term, they will extend the front line of the fight, he told B-17 on Tuesday.

“This raises the stakes and may result in them committing beyond a sustainable position,” he said.

Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank, made a similar assessment in an update on Sunday.

They also said that because of the size of the conflict, neither Russia nor Ukraine can win the war with a single campaign.