Mines Have Been Savaging Russian Attacks In Kursk, Destroying Their Armor

33% of Russian equipment destruction in their Kursk counteroffensive is due to Ukrainian mines. 

The reason is that the Russians continue to attack along the same roads, being heedless of casualties, making it easier for Ukrainian sappers to lay and re-lay their mines. JL

David Axe reports in Forbes:

Mines have accounted for a third of Russian vehicles in the nine days since the Russians launched their offensive in Kursk. In one assault, possibly a botched Nov. 7 attack by the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade, the Russians lost 17 vehicles “only due to detonation of mines.” A single Ukrainian engineering unit—the 12th Support Regiment—is responsible for laying mines. Russian commanders are doing the Ukrainian sappers a huge favor by ordering their forces to attack along the same roads, day after day despite previous defeats. The Ukrainians can concentrate their mines on the few roads leading into the most critical sector. Russian scouts are locating the mines "but before the attack, no one thought to clear the road.”

Ukrainian mines are wreaking havoc on Russian forces attacking the 250-square-mile salient Ukrainian forces occupy in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast. According to Gen. Oleksandr Pavliuk, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, mines have accounted for a third of Russian vehicles in the nine days since the Russians launched their offensive in Kursk.In one assault, possibly a botched Nov. 7 attack by the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade, the Russians lost 17 vehicles “only due to detonation of mines,” Pavliuk wrote.

A single Ukrainian engineering unit—the 12th Support Regiment—is responsible for laying many of the mines. Apparently laying mines by hand and by drone, the Ukrainian sappers have done to the attacking Russians what Russian sappers did to attacking Ukrainians in southern Ukraine 17 months ago.

Recall that, when a newly organized Ukrainian corps launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in June 2023, the corps quickly bogged down in one of the densest minefields in recent military history. Anticipating the Ukrainian offensive, the Russians quadrupled the depth of their defensive minefields, from 120 meters to 500 meters—and also increased the density of mines within the expanded fields.

The Ukrainian mining operation in Kursk appears to be taking a different approach. Russian commanders are doing the Ukrainian sappers a huge favor by ordering their forces to attack along the same roads, day after day despite previous defeats.

Where the Russians had to blanket a wide area with mines in order to block Ukrainian vehicles moving along roads and fields, the Ukrainians can concentrate their mines on the few roads leading into the most critical sector on the western side of the Kursk salient. A road intersection near the village of Zelenyi Shylakh is littered with dozens of wrecked Russian vehicles.

Catastrophic losses in this area have driven daily Russian casualties to more than 1,500 on average—a record high in Russia’s 33-month wider war on Ukraine. Despite the recent arrival of thousands of North Korean troops, key Russian regiments in Kursk have been so badly hollowed out that outnumbered Ukrainian troops have actually managed to mount local counterattacks—most recently in Novoivanovka, a stone’s throw from Zelenyi Shylakh.

 

Poetically, Ukrainian forces in the area include the elite 47th Mechanized Brigade, the same unit that got bogged down in those Russian minefields in Zaporizhzhia in June 2023. For the 47th Mechanized Brigade’s war-weary troopers, all those Russian vehicles blowing up on mines in Kursk is belated revenge for their own heavy losses last year.

It’s worth asking why the Russians apparently learned nothing from the Ukrainians’ terrible experience in Zaporizhzhia in 2023. According to Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, analysts with the Royal United Services Institute in London, the Ukrainian counteroffensive corps in Zaporizhzhia was constrained by its inability to conduct “mine reconnaissance in depth.” That is, spotting newly laid mines right before a planned attack.

The Russians may also be struggling to spot the mines peppering their planned assault routes. But there’s another, more ominous explanation for the recent heavy losses to Ukrainian mines: Russian scouts are locating the mines—but their commanders are failing to relay accurate intelligence to assault groups.

That’s reportedly what happened to those ill-fated marines from the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade in the lead-up to their disastrous attack near Zelenyi Shylakh starting on Nov. 7. “False information had previously been reported that the road (where equipment was later blown up) had come under our control,” claimed Romanov, a popular Russian blogger.

“Logically, after receiving this information, the general staff issued an order to storm the settlement,” Romanov explained. “Before the attack, no one even thought to clear the road of mines.”