Eight days into Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, the Ukrainian invasion corps—some or all of five mechanized brigades, three air assault brigades and several independent battalions—has fully occupied its first major settlement: the town of Sudzha.
But the Ukrainians didn’t just capture Sudzha with its pre-invasion population of 5,100—they also captured many of the Russian troops who were defending the town.
Ukrainian special forces took 102 Russian prisoners as Sudzha fell on Wednesday. “This is the largest one-time ‘catch’ since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” according to an Estonian analyst who posts under WarTranslated.
How those Russians from the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment became prisoners speaks volumes about the main dynamics of the ongoing battle in Kursk.
When Ukrainian forces rolled into Kursk on Aug. 6, the first Russian troops they encountered weren’t the Russian military’s best professional troops. Instead, they were lightly equipped, ambivalently led conscripts.
It was official Russian policy that conscripts—men between the ages of 18 and 30 who performed a year of mandatory military service—would strictly serve in second-line military roles. They wouldn’t see combat.
That changed in Kursk, as the Ukrainian advance overtook units and parts of units that were never supposed to be on the front line. There have been several instances of large groups of bewildered and terrified Russian conscripts, some of whom only fired a few rifle rounds during their cursory military training, surrendering to battle-hardened Ukrainian troops.
There were reportedly conscripts among those 102 Russians the Ukrainians captured on Wednesday.
The 488th Motor Rifle Regiment was in a difficult position as Ukrainian brigades closed in. Outgunned by the Ukrainian army’s 88th Mechanized Brigade, parts of the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment tried retreating on or before Wednesday. According to the Center for Defense Strategies, the fleeing Russians got turned back by Chechen “blocking units” working for the Kremlin.
In Soviet and Russian tradition, a blocking unit forces poorly motivated troops to fight—by threatening to arrest them … or even shoot them. Compared to well-trained professional troops, undertrained conscripts are more likely to try fleeing after coming under fire. In that sense, conscripts and blocking units go hand-in-hand in the Russian military.
But forcing the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment to turn around and fight didn’t improve the regiment’s odds against the 88th Mechanized Brigade.
Some of the Russian regiment’s 2,000 or so troops were able to retreat from Sudzha on Wednesday when an adjacent Russian unit gained control over at least one route out of the town, CDS reported. But parts of the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment got left behind—and grabbed by the special forces at the vanguard of the Ukrainian advance.
Inasmuch as the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment’s heavy reliance on conscripts contributed to the unit’s defeat in Sudzha, similar embarrassments could be in the cards for the Russians as the Ukrainian invasion grinds into its second week.
That’s because the Kremlin appears to be sending more conscripts into Kursk in a desperate bid to slow the Ukrainian advance. “The Russian military command is transferring conscript soldiers from the spring draft of this year from Moscow, Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Sverdlovsk, Murmansk and Samara Oblasts to Kursk Oblast to reinforce their troops,” CDS explained.
Everyday Russians, who never expected their conscripted sons to do any actual fighting, are unhappy. According to CDS, “there is negative feedback from human rights activists and relatives who protest the use of conscripts in active combat operations.”
It’s unclear why the Kremlin is violating its policy against conscripts in combat and risking a political crisis. It’s possible Russian commanders are saving their professional troops for the ongoing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.
But it’s also possible there aren’t any professional troops to spare—that sending good troops to Kursk would create new gaps in Russian lines in Ukraine. Redeploying professional soldiers might help contain the Ukrainian invasion, but at the risk of inviting separate Ukrainian breakthroughs elsewhere.
“We haven’t seen a substantial move [of Russian troops] just yet,” a source familiar with U.S. intelligence told CNN, “and we can’t tell whether that’s just because they’re only just getting started moving forces, or whether they just don’t have the forces to move.”
Sources:
1. WarTranslated: https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1823992642872447265
2. Center for Defense Strategies: https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-140824; https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-150824
3. CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/15/politics/russia-has-diverted-several-thousand-troops-from-occupied-ukraine-to-counter-kursk-offensive-us-officials-say?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_google
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