For the second time in two weeks, Ukrainian forces have blown up a headquarters belonging to the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade. The battered brigade, one of the lead units for Russia’s two-month-old counteroffensive in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, just can’t catch a break.
The “precision” raid hit the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade’s headquarters in Belaya on Tuesday, according to the Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv. It’s unclear what munitions the Ukrainians used, but Belaya is only 20 miles east of Sudzha—the anchor of the 250-square-mile salient that Ukrainian troops carved out of Kursk in August—so there are a lot of candidates.
They include U.S.-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems firing guided rockets or Army Tactical Missile Systems ballistic missiles, warplanes lobbing American or French glide bombs or French or British cruise missiles and heavy attack drones. Thirty-five months into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Ukraine possesses an array of deep-strike weapons.
The beleaguered 810th Naval Infantry Brigade has been on the receiving end of a disproportionate share of this firepower. On Christmas Day, the Ukrainians struck a separate brigade headquarters in Lgov, 25 miles north of Sudzha, creating a “fiery impression,” the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications quipped.
Shortly after the Christmas Day raid, the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade rotated off the front line on the northwest edge of the Kursk salient and motored to Plekhove, just east of the salient, for a brief period of rest.
The 2,500-person unit needed the break. The 810th Naval Infantry Brigade and its sister unit in the Kursk counteroffensive, the tragic 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, have been badly depleted by two months of mostly failed assaults on the salient.
Today, Ukrainian troops repulsed yet another attack by the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade around Pogrebki, the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported. The Russian marines have thrown at least two 400-person battalions at Pogrebki since November, with nothing to show for it but casualties.
Also today: a Ukrainian missile struck a concentration of 810th Naval Infantry Brigade marines in Ivanovskoe, 25 miles north of Sudzha, according to CDS. Coming amid repeated strikes on Russian marines elsewhere in Kursk, that attack in Ivanovskoe almost seems gratuitous.
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