Kursk operation cost was ‘too high’ for Ukraine, ex-military chief Zaluzhnyi says

12 comments

1. The Allies lost too many soldiers at Hurtgen Forest and Monte Cassino, but they won the war regardless. War is difficult and bad decisions do get made even by the victors. What I will say is that no one has ever made as many bad decisions as Russia has and still won.

2. They had to try something. Hindsight is always 20/20. They wanted something to negotiate and well Russia as usuall didnt give a F.

3. Well they may have kept it if the US didn’t left in the dark with intelligence for about a week (more ? less?)
   Maybe they would have lost it, maybe not, but they wouldn’t have had to retreat in a hurry with so much lives and equipement lost.

   It’s well known that Zaluzhnyi has political ambitions that did go well with Zelensky so no wonder he would say that but it’s still the war and I wouldn’t welcome that kind of political infighting if I were Ukrainian

   Someone has an opinion on how much more competent Zaluzhnyi is compared to Syrski ?
   I seem to remember that Syrski is more soviet old school and Zaluzhnyi maybe more careful when it comes to his men’s lives but I am not sure

4. What an asshole. Undermining morale while the war is still going on.

5. The kursk operation was extremely valuable as way to undermine russias reputation and remove its sense of strength/invulnerability. Most importantly it showed to everyone for many months how quickly a major chunk of russia could be overtaken and how much russia struggles to take it back even when this region was pretty much in the most militarized part of russia. Plus it showed that civilians didn’t fight back and those who stayed were pretty complacent and friendly to the new temporary government.

   Many rebel groups and freedom fighters can learn from it. Findings from this experimental incursion could lead to something similar to what happened with overthrowing assad in syria. Things stagnate for long time but then change quickly. It’s debatable and subjective if cost in lives was acceptable for such experiment but russia in its current form has caused vastly more deaths than this experimental skirmish that teached about how to replace government in parts of russia through armed takeover.

6. I agree they should have stayed on the defensive and not tried to grab Russian territory. Ukraine can win by keeping the kill ratio in their favor, and they can best do this by staying on the defensive as much as possible, and only going on the offensive when they can do so with minimal casualties.

   Kursk also gave Russia the opportunity to call upon North Korea to send soldiers to join the conflict. I doubt Putin would have been able to convince Kim Jong Un to do so without actual Russian soil being invaded.

7. The one beneit of the operation was forcing the war onto Russian soil rather thsn allowing Russis to attack Sumy

8. Kind of a dumb thing for him to say. It seems to be a an agreed consensus that Russia had plans for the Sumy area and were building troops up when Ukraine preempted them. Russia then spent months building up tens of thousands of troops in Kursk to push them out.

   If Ukraine hadn’t gone into Kursk, then they would have been fighting, likely on a much smaller scale, in Sumy instead. But more importantly, Russia would have been able to put that many more soldiers on the Donetsk front, where they were having much more success. Ultimately those battles were going to happen somewhere – better that they are on Russian territory instead. The only caveat to that was the North Korea troops, which likely wasn’t anticipated.

   Even so, it only stopped making sense in the last month or two and not retreating cleanly while they still could to better positions. A mistake Ukraine seems to never learn. Even when Zaluzhnyi was the boss. Same thing in Severodonetsk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, etc.

9. Says the guy who ran the Krynki operation.

10. Well, in the light of the UKR new tactics and strategy, it was, but luckily things have changed.

11. Brilliant execution though.

12. The Kursk operation required a massive shift of Russian troops, and paused / slowed a planned offensive. Trouble is, it is difficult to weigh tangible results against a theoretical alternative.

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