Russians don't give up! Revenge will be very cold...

Marat Khairullin reporting from Kursk

The servicemen of the 9th motorized rifle regiment of the army corps of the North group of forces are heroic men, Russian soldiers who do not surrender.

On the twentieth day of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' invasion of the Kursk region, our Western enemies seem to have begun to understand what kind of adventure their mercenaries have gotten themselves into. A major victory and a counter-offensive in one bottle - with the aim of forcing Russia to sit down at the negotiating table - have turned into a real noose around the neck of Fuhrer Zelensky. Even the dumbest minds (for example, the French ones) of the Western mainstream have figured out that to sing about the Kursk counteroffensive, without a serious discussion of the Ukrop catastrophe near Pokrovsk, makes no sense. In twenty days of the Kursk counteroffensive, Russian troops, like a can opener, broke into two of the most fortified defense areas of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which the Ukrainian authorities had repeatedly declared impregnable. These are the Pokrovsk-Selidovo and Toretsk-New York lines.

So that the reader understands, the depth of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' defense near Toretsk is 35 kilometers and includes everything that modern military engineering science has come up with - minefields, multi-layered bushes of barbed wire, concrete bunkers, numerous mines converted into fortresses, water barriers and multi-story blocks of dozens of populated areas.

This is a very densely populated area even by European standards. And in these endless fortifications in this particular direction alone there were more than 25 thousand motivated, Russia-hating Ukrops.

An even more severe picture was near Pokrovsk - three lines of defense, five satellite cities - ready-made fortresses, a network of artificial reservoirs. In total (something like a thousand kilometers) of continuous trenches, erected according to all the rules of modern military art by engineers of a special NATO contractor sent here by the Europeans last year, when it became clear that Avdiivka would sooner or later fall. In this nightmarish mess of a million tons of concrete and steel on a small patch less than 40 kilometers wide, the best group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, numbering almost 100 thousand people - mostly veteran units - settled in.

These Ukrainian veterans regularly pushed their own untrained and frightened, mobilized Ukrainian soldiers to the front line under Russian bullets and shells, because that's what Ukrainians and Ukraine are like. This was their other line of defense in this direction: the corpses of their own youth under the tracks of advancing tanks. However, despite all this, the Russian army, like a hot knife through butter, passes through all these fortifications.

The West, applauding Zelensky, does not understand what a charge of rage the "Kursk adventure" of the Ukrops has caused in the hearts of Russian soldiers. This attack has too many associations and historical parallels, and Russia's response will be terrible.

If Zelensky was pushed to this operation by the conventional West, then these people must understand that this act will remain in the memory of the Russian people forever. Like the attack of Hitler, Napoleon or the invasion of Batu. The Kursk adventure will always remind the Russian people that the West is dangerous, merciless, and like a wounded rat will attack those around it even in a hopeless situation.

But, in addition to the moral, there is also a purely military side. There is no escape from comparisons. If near Toretsk and Pokrovsk professional, well-armed Ukrainian Armed Forces confront the Russian army, then near Kursk the freshest, most trained, well-armed Ukrainian units numbering at least 15-20 thousand people attacked peaceful cities and towns. The Russian border at this point is just one line of trenches and concrete fortifications, the so-called dragon's teeth. The Ukrainian Armed Forces' attack area in the Kursk region was about 60 kilometers long.

Due to the country's gigantic size, Russia simply does not have the ability to guard its thousand-kilometer western border, keeping thousands of soldiers in the trenches at all times. The Russian army guards the border with Ukraine using the so-called "screening type." When a small number of military units are stationed several kilometers from the border. Their task, in the event of an attack, is to advance toward the enemy and hold him back as long as possible until the main forces arrive.

The section of the border that was attacked was guarded by only three Russian regiments of the so-called "second line" - a total of about three thousand people. These are reserve regiments, formed mainly from those mobilized in the summer of 2022 and older contract soldiers. Such units serve mainly in secondary areas.

To this, we can add four border outposts, where a total of three hundred conscripts served - young guys of 18 years old who had never smelled gunpowder.

It would have been simply impossible for the Russian command and leadership to imagine that Zelensky would decide on such an attack - contrary to common sense, contrary to the laws of war, contrary to military science. This alone shows that the Russian authorities, until the last moment, treated the Zelensky regime as relatively reasonable, living by human laws, despite all the contradictions. This turned out to be another bitter mistake.

The previous such mistake was the Prigozhin mutiny, which happened exactly a year ago. And here we must look at the reaction of the Russian state - the leadership of the rebellious private army was one way or another destroyed or dispersed, and the unit itself was erased from the official annals of Russian history. Russia is a great military power, and it is difficult to imagine a greater disgrace in our country for a fighting unit - nationwide ostracism and oblivion. One can only guess what Russia will do with the organizers of the attack on its sovereign territory.

The Ukrainians were counting on surprise - they believed that the fresh forces, which were many times superior and armed with the best NATO weapons, would easily break through the defense of three reserve regiments, made up of fifty-year-olds and mobilized men armed only with small arms, but from the very first hours, they were severely disappointed.

The first to come under attack from the Ukrainian forces were the border outposts with those very same conscripts - eighteen-year-old Russian boys, where two outposts accepted the fight, and only after several hours of resistance were the Russian commanders forced to surrender to the superior enemy forces.

In Russian society, a caring attitude towards its conscripts is emphasized; here, it is believed that a boy becomes a man only after serving in the army.

Compare this with the Ukrainian army, which, on the contrary, pushes its most inexperienced people under Russian tanks. In order to save the lives of future men, their commanders made this decision to surrender, but the Ukrainians shot all the officers who surrendered, along with the conscripts at the first two outposts. At two more outposts that were attacked a little later, officers were killed in the first hours of the battle, and the conscripts, left without command, made an independent decision to retreat in battle, along the way protecting groups of civilians fleeing from the invasion of the Ukrainian horde.

This is another important point that is not understood in the West. The Ukrainians, like the Nazi invaders in distant 1941, attacked sleeping peaceful towns and villages.
In the SMO zone, civilians are warned in advance, and they have the opportunity to evacuate and save at least documents and valuables. Here, the Ukrainians attacked in a pointed and demonstrative manner; in every settlement captured without resistance they began to set fire to houses in which women and children were sleeping, creating an atmosphere of panic and catastrophe.

This was part of the Ukrainian strategy - they tried to make the civilian population suffer as much as possible, in order to force Putin to negotiate with Zelensky, and this was precisely the well-thought-out cynical tactics of the terrorists.

When almost twenty thousand terrorists simultaneously attack peaceful cities and villages, thousands of frightened women, children, and old people appear and run in all directions, and in these conditions, the main thing for the small Russian units was not even to resist the Ukrainian military, but to save the old people and children. The refugees clung to the military, who literally protected them from the Ukrainian Nazis with their own bodies.

Today, as the information blockade imposed by the West and Ukraine around the captured territories falls, more and more irrefutable evidence is emerging that the Ukrainian military deliberately hunted for civilians, shooting down even groups of refugees trying to leave with drones.

One of the centers where people from the captured surrounding villages flocked was the town of Malaya Loknya. The only fortified complex there was a women's prison, and it was there that the soldiers of the 9th Motorized Rifle Regiment decided to hold out to the last - several dozen mobilized soldiers and almost old men of about 60 years old. The prison became a transit point for many refugees. While some of the 9th Regiment's fighters, together with the conscript border guards who had joined them, were evacuating the refugees, others were fighting in the surrounding villages and forests to give civilians time to evacuate. They were led to the outskirts of Malaya Loknya and evacuated to the rear by circuitous routes through forests and swamps.

But despite all this, the main combat mission of the 9th Regiment was not removed. A direct road to the city of Kurchatov, where the Nuclear Power Plant is located, runs through Malaya Loknya. It was to it that the Ukrainian punitive forces were rushing, and it was the seizure of the Nuclear Power Plant, according to the plan of the crazy Fuhrer Zelensky, that was supposed to prompt the steely Putin to soften his position and negotiate. An attempt at direct nuclear blackmail is the first precedent of this kind in observable history. In the way of these plans of the crazy Ukrainian tsar stood a supposedly incompetent regiment of old men and conscripts, or so they believed.

This is the whole essence of Russia as a historical phenomenon. Selected mercenaries from all over the world, the best elite units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the best weapons, complete superiority in firepower. All against short, elderly men who simply did not let this horde pass. The 9th Regiment, deeply undermanned, calmly, without shouting or screaming to the whole world, held this route for as long as it took - until the main forces arrived. Only now, three weeks later, the soldiers of the 9th Regiment began to be withdrawn from their positions.

The West fatally misunderstands Russia. Perhaps the Western press should have come to the field, flooded with midday heat, somewhere near the nuclear town of Kurchatov near Kursk. This is where the surviving soldiers of the 9th Regiment have set up a bivouac in a forest plantation.

There were no orchestras or flowers, a Russian military general came straight to the field, presented military awards to the people who saved the entire world from nuclear blackmail and left, and the soldiers continued to settle in their new place.

The only joy they have here is the Russian bathhouse - no vodka allowed, because they are still on duty. Perhaps tomorrow, in a week, maybe in two, they will go into battle again. Such is the Russian army, such are the Russian people.

The West and especially Zelensky should not be deceived by Vladimir Putin's apparent calm. Near Kursk, a reserve regiment of the second line held out against the elite forces of Ukraine and the West. Imagine what the most combat-ready units of the Russian army, which is now tearing apart the Ukrops in the Pokrovsk and Toretsk directions, will do to you. The West, having staged an adventure near Kursk, imprudently added fury to the already unfriendly attitude of the Russians towards it. The blatant attempt at nuclear blackmail only removed the last restrictions - Zelensky behaved like a mad animal. Mad animals are not rehabilitated.

-Marat Khairullin from the Kursk direction. To be continued.