Feigning defeat and retreat, soldiers from the Ukrainian army’s 225th Assault Battalion lured a large Russian force into a trap in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast on or just before Thursday.
As the overconfident Russians surged forward into a treeline just outside the village of Sverdlikovo, possibly believing they were finally about to take control of the long-contested village, a Ukrainian High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System rocket launcher took aim from potentially tens of miles away.
As a Ukrainian drone observed, an M30/31 rocket scattered scores of grenade-sized bomblets across the treeline. “The strike destroyed a significant part of the enemy’s manpower, and our groups returned to complete the clearing of the territory,” the 225th Assault Battalion reported.
The Thursday ambush, the result of careful coordination between the battalion headquarters and its front-line companies and an adjacent artillery brigade, helps explain why Russian and North Korean casualties have been so high in the three months since the 60,000-strong Russian-led army in Kursk redoubled its efforts to eject 20,000 Ukrainian troops from the 250-square-mile salient they have occupied in Kursk since August.
According to Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky, 30,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in Kursk.
Not only are the Russian and North Koreans attacking day after day along the same few roads leading toward the town of Sudzha, the anchor of the Ukrainian salient, they’re increasingly doing so on foot—and with too little support. Infantry are vulnerable to artillery, and especially vulnerable when they cluster together in a pre-sighted kill zone.
To lure the Russians into that kill zone near Sverdlikovo, the 225th Assault Battalion’s own infantry conducted a pre-planned withdrawal from the same position. “When the enemy, believing in his ‘success,’ pulled significant forces into this square, they were targeted with cluster munitions from HIMARS,” the battalion explained.
It’s unclear how many Russians were present—and how many were hit. As the wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fourth year, the biggest Russian assaults might involve 50 vehicles and a few hundred troops; most Russian assaults are much smaller.
Still, it’s worth noting that the most disastrous Russian and North Korean attacks in recent weeks, when they failed, left behind hundreds of dead and wounded.
That the 225th Assault Battalion is especially proud of the ambush speaks to the potentially enormous Russian body count. “It is not often that we can reveal the details of such operations,” the battalion stated, “but this time we managed to show how coordination, tactics and modern weapons work in the hands of the armed forces of Ukraine.”
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