Ukrainian fighter jets are demolishing buildings and bridges in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, clearing a path for Ukrainian troops who have reached the town of Tyotkino, just 1.6 km from the border. But Russian forces are already threatening to cut them off.
The dramatic destruction of a pair of bridges outside Zvannoe, 19 km northeast of Tyotkino (Tetkino), was a prelude to the Ukrainian advance.
On May 13 and 14, Ukrainian air force jets—possibly Sukhoi Su-27s—dropped precision glide bombs on the bridges from potentially tens of kilometers away.
One of the bridges had been damaged in a previous raid. Russian troops fetching equipment from the initial raid were caught in the follow-up attack—and videoed the bomb impact that apparently killed them.
A battle-damage assessment by Ukrainian drones confirmed the destruction of a temporary pontoon bridge Russian engineers had laid across the weakened span, as well as the destruction of at least one truck.
The hits on bridges, clearly intended to throttle Russian logistics into Tyotkino, apparently did their job.
On or before Tuesday, Ukrainian troops—possibly from the 225th Assault Regiment or the 21st Mechanized Brigade—advanced into the southern outskirts of Tyotkino, according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies.
It was a hard fight getting there, even with Ukrainian Mikoyan MiG-29s lobbing bombs ahead of the attackers. The Ukrainians advanced slowly over a period of at least two weeks, enduring strikes by Russian glide-bombs and losing at least one precious M-2 Bradley fighting vehicle in the process.
Ukrainian and pro-Ukrainian forces have attacked Tyotkino before, but have rarely stayed long.
Ukrainian border raids tend to be fleeting. The most notable exception—the Kursk incursion that captured a 600-square-km salient around the town of Sudzha, 64 km east of Tyotkino—was a risky gambit for the general staff in Kyiv.
Yes, a strong Ukrainian force, peaking at a dozen or so battalions, held onto the Kursk incursion for six months starting in August. But they ultimately retreated after an elite Russian drone team deployed along the salient and, in a heady few days, blew up hundreds of Ukrainian vehicles along the only main supply route into Sudzha.
The dangerous Kursk incursion
By early March, Ukrainian troops had retreated back across the border. The battle around the Sudzha salient was the first big battle in two years in which the Ukrainians lost as much heavy equipment as the Russians lost—a loss ratio Ukraine can’t afford in a grinding war of attrition against a much larger foe.
It’s unlikely the Ukrainian raiders plan to stay in Tyotkino the way they stayed in the Kursk incursion. The aerial bombardment of Tyotkino and Zvannoe, while intensive, isn’t as intensive as the bombardment that accompanied the Ukrainian attack toward Sudzha last year.
Indeed, Russian troops have already slipped through the aerial cordon. On the same day the Center for Defense Strategies noted the Ukrainian advance into the southern edge of Tyotkino, the group also noted Russian advances toward the border control point just 1.6 km south of Tyotkino.
In other words, the Russians are behind the Ukrainians—a less-than-ideal situation for Kyiv’s raiders.
To avoid the one-for-one loss ratio that made the Sudzha incursion such a drain on Ukraine’s combat power, Ukrainian forces must avoid getting invested in an exposed salient with fragile supply lines.
At the moment, their situation—probing Tyotkino as Ukrainian and Russian bombs rain down on all sides and Russian infantry flank them—is tenuous, but not yet disastrous. It could become disastrous if the Ukrainians try to capture Tyotkino—and hold it.
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