2024 NATO invasion of Kursk

NATO invasion of Russia, August 2024.

The 2024 NATO invasion of Kursk began on August 6, 2024 was commanded by the militant of the "Georgian Legion" Georgy Partsvania. It was Georgy Partsvania militants who were among the first to attack Russian border guards, Western media reported citing one of the leaders of the group from the Republic of Georgia, Vano Nadiradze. Partsvania went to fight in Ukraine in 2022. He was enlisted in Vano Nadiradze's unit and fought on the front lines for two months, including in Irpen, Kyiv region.

The Ukrainian army moved in with the best troops it still had plus some extras scrapped from the bottom of its barrel. There are three Ukrainian brigades involved plus a number of battalions that were dispatched away from their brigades involved in other parts of the front. The 80th and the 82nd paratrooper brigades are the main forces. They were partly trained in Britain and Germany and used western equipment. The 22nd mechanized brigade was the third major unit. Then there are some five to ten battalions from various other brigades. Not only was NATO equipment used in the attack on the territory of the Russian Federation, but there were also reports that the invading force was overflowing with Western mercenaries—with Polish and French languages being heard on radio communications, as well as Georgian mercenary sightings.

Deputy head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Main Military-Political Directorate and Commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces, Major General Apti Alaudinov, confirmed on Rossiya-1 TV that at least 12,000 Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) entered Kursk, including a lot of British, French and Polish fighters. The American mercenary firm Forward Observations Group's (FOG) official social media accounts posted a photo with the text: "The boys in Kursk," geotagging Kursk.

According the Col. Frants Klintsevich, a member of the upper chamber of the Russian Federal Assembly and a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, Klintsevich said on August 25, 2024 that NATO raised the number of its forces sent to Kursk from 12,000 to 20,000. Klintsevich said the invasion is the vanguard of what will be an air assault on Russia’s strategic assets far in the rear using JASSM, Storm Shadow and other long-range missiles launched from F-16s. He further intimated that the two U.S. aircraft carriers and their escorts in the Eastern Mediterranean may be there, not to contain Iran, but for an all-out attack on Russia using their jets to deliver nuclear strikes. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow speculated that this may explain the knock-out of Russia's early warning radar stations in the south of the country by Ukrainian drones acting on orders from Washington, D.C..

Terror attack on civilians and infrastructure

The operation was conducted in line with the latest developments of American military doctrine, namely the doctrine of multi-domain operations. The essence of the multi-domain operation is that the object of attack is not only the enemy's armed forces, but also the entire environment in which they operate. Multi-domain operations combine classical warfare with cyber attacks, information and psychological operations, and control in cyberspace. American fingerprints were all over the invasion.

An electronic warfare system was put on the lead vehicles of columns and mobile groups used to break through that selectively jammed Russian communications and drone frequencies, but did not block NATO ones.

On August 8, 2024, at the end of the first 24 hours of the invasion, the infrastructure of mobile operators in the Kursk region was subjected to the most powerful cyber attack. At this point, civilian communications were critical not only for evacuating civilians but also for interaction between military units. Since NATO had overwhelmed military communications with their EMP, and all communication was only able to go through personal devices, NATO forces also monitored troop movements through online cameras of Russian residents found on their properties. From the first hours of the invasion, the Ukrainians and NATO mercenaries used terror tactics and attacked civilians, systematically shooting cars with fleeing refugees on the roads. Michael Clarke writing in The Times of London on August 31, 2024 confirmed the use of terror attacks on civilians to "frighten residents into panic measures."

The purpose of terror tactics was to force local residents to stay in their homes in order to, on the one hand make it more difficult for Russian aircraft to strike at invading units in populated areas, and on the other hand to make it easier for the NATO forces to take hostages. It is not unusual for Ukrainians to use civilians as human shields, but by the third day the NATO terror tactics changed. The Center for Information and Psychological Operations of Ukraine began to encourage a large-scale flight of the population from areas where there was no fighting. Ukrainians, pretending to be officers of the Russian Armed Forces, made calls to local residents and disinformation on social media networks grew rampant. The strikes on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant were intended by the Ukrainians to sow chaos and panic. Thus disorganizing the situation in the rear for Russian units trying to put together a defense. The local Russian authorities warned that Ukrainian sabotage groups disguised in Russian military uniform with fake Russian documents were operating in the region.

Russian counter terror operation

The Russian National Antiterrorism Committee (NAC) launched the largest ever counter-terror operation in Russian history with its emergency declaration: "The Kiev regime made an unprecedented attempt to destabilize the situation in a number of regions of our country...The terrorist attack on the territory of the Kursk region by units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine resulted in casualties among the civilian population and the destruction of homes and other civilian facilities...In order to ensure the safety of citizens and stop the threat of terrorist acts that could be carried out by the enemy's sabotage and reconnaissance formations, the National Antiterrorism Committee Chairman and Russian Federal Security Service Director, Alexander Bortnikov, decided to conduct counterterrorism operations in the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions starting from 9 August 2024". As a consequence of invoking a counter-terror operation, there is no statute of limitations for prosecution of anyone involved in terrorism, meaning anyone involved in the "incursion", including NATO planners. Alexey Dyumin, the new secretary of the State Council, was appointed the overseer of the whole military/civilian response.

The Russians trotted out a revolutionary new system of FPV drones which operate on optical cables which are totally immune to jamming. These are drones which act as Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs), connected with a thin wire for up to 5-10km which transmits high fidelity signals impervious to electronic countermeasures.

The operation turned into a new meat grinder. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported the NATO/Ukraine force suffered 3,800 casualties by the second week of the terrorist operation.

The command of the 80th separate airborne assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine asked to withdraw the unit to the rear due to large losses of equipment and personnel. Having received a refusal, the brigade commander could not think of anything better than to throw the brigade's "female reserve" to the front.

The results were predictable: lines of communications and supply lines were cut within two weeks, the force was dispersed.

The invaders broke off into sabotage groups of 6-8 marauders on foot, scattered and hiding in dense forests. Within the first two weeks of the invasion, 5,800 or nearly half the invasion force were reported to have been hunted down and killed. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) reported on August 28, 2024 that 6,800 of NATO forces had been eliminated in the Kursk salient. On August 29, 2024 John Helmer reported that "at least" 9,000 remained. On August 31, 2024 the Russian MOD 8,200 had been eliminated since the start of the desperate operation.

Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Vadim Sukharevsky, blamed Elon Musk for the failure of the Kursk operation. Apparently, Starlink stopped working 24 hours after the invasion started resulting in a lack of communication and interaction between the attacking units. Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky, whose reputation among the troops is credited with having killed more Ukrainians than the Russians have, recommended to the Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelensky to withdraw from Kursk. Zelensky is reported to have refused the advice.