Russia Deploys Soviet-Era Weapons to Defend Kursk


Russia is deploying Soviet-era weapons to defend its Kursk region amid Ukraine’s three-week-old incursion into the territory, a video published by Russia’s defense ministry shows.

The ministry released footage showing its troops using 130-mm M-46 howitzers from the 1950s in Kursk, where Ukraine launched a surprise offensive on August 6, Russian investigative site Agentstvo reported on Monday.

President Vladimir Putin had been scrambling to redeploy a portion of his troops from the front line in Ukraine to the Kursk region as Kyiv’s forces seize large chunks of territory there. The Wall Street Journal on August 17 reported that some 5,000 personnel had already been redeployed from Ukraine to Kursk by August 13.

Other reports suggested that Putin’s Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, transferred military equipment from his own units to Russia because of Ukraine’s incursion. Newsweek has contacted Russia’s defense ministry for comment by email.

Russian troops are using the Soviet-era howitzers to attack “mobile armored groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk border area,” the Russian defense ministry said on Telegram.

Ukraine meanwhile is reported to be deploying some NATO-supplied equipment in the region. One German newspaper reported that a video from the Kursk region showed Kyiv’s forces using WiSENT 1 armored vehicles modeled on German-made Leopard 1 tanks.

German-supplied Marder infantry fighting vehicles have also been spotted in the region, Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported.

Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, defended Ukraine’s ability to use German-supplied weapons on Russian soil, telling Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), a Swiss broadcasting company, on August 17, that they “have become the responsibility of Ukraine, which is defending itself against an aggressor and exercising its right to self-defense.”

In the latest situational update on territory seized by Ukraine in its Kursk incursion, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv’s forces had seized control of at least 1,250 square kilometers (483 square miles) of Russian territory and 92 settlements on August 19.

Since then, Ukrainian forces have not advanced much further into the region, according to the the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, which said Monday that neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces made any significant confirmed or claimed advances.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on August 8 the armored assault aims to boost Kyiv’s position in potential future negotiations with Russia. He added Kyiv hopes the country’s advances will “scare” Russians and worsen their attitude toward Putin.

Days later, a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson said Kyiv has no interest in “taking territory” in Kursk.

“The sooner Russia agrees to restore a just peace, the sooner Ukrainian raids on Russian territory will stop. As long as Putin continues the war, he will receive such responses from Ukraine,” the spokesperson told reporters in Kyiv on August 13.

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