The fight for Ukraine's Kursk salient revived. But with no end in sight, a third winter of war approaches.
Despite Putin's feigned indifference to the fate of Ukraine's incursion into Russian territory, Russia used the forces it had been massing to strike back at Ukraine's salient. The battle continues. And Ukraine complicates the fight with an attack that apparently seeks to outflank the primary Russian axis of advance into the western flank of the salient. But nothing dramatic has developed.
On the Donbas front, Russia attacks but the efforts seem weaker, at least in part from the diversion of forces to the Kursk front. The biggest drama there is the slow Russian approach to the small city of Pokrovsk. The south is mostly quiet all the way to the Kherson front.
Nothing dramatic has taken place on the Black Sea lately; but Ukraine and Russia keep up strategic warfare behind enemy lines. Ukraine's long-range suicide drones have made some spectacular strikes. How much that affects the fighting at the front or Russian morale is unclear to me. And we'll see how well prepared Ukraine is for Russia's attempts to freeze them into submission this winter.
And while Russia keeps portraying itself as a behemoth with limitless manpower supplies, as their so-called military expansion orders "confirms," the Russian people aren't clamoring at the recruiter gates, apparently:
The Kremlin appears to be reorganizing Russia's decentralized, regional volunteer recruitment campaigns into a federal effort, indicating that Russia is struggling to meet the manpower demands of its war in Ukraine despite previous claims that the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast caused a spike in Russia's volunteer recruitment.
Once more we shall see who rearms faster over this third full winter. And will either or both conduct winter offensives?
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
NOTE: You may also read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.NOTE: The image was made with DALL-E 3 on Bing.
