As Russian Troops Head For Kursk, Ukraine’s HIMARS Rockets Meet Them Halfway

Something struck a group of Russian troops in Lgov, a town of 21,000 in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, late Sunday or early Monday. “It’s terrible,” a bystander cried. “The guys are all in the bunker,” they added as the bunker burned.

A Ukrainian official insinuated the fire was the result of a Ukrainian raid, which would make sense. Lgov lies just 30 miles north of the town of Sudzha, the anchor of the 250-square-mile salient that Ukrainian forces carved out of Kursk back in August. It’s a key road and rail node for troops and supplies supporting the two-month-old Russian counteroffensive in Kursk.

The Ukrainians have targeted Lgov before, most notably on Christmas Day, when Ukrainian munitions—possibly from American-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers—blew up a headquarters belonging to the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade, one of the lead units for the Russian counteroffensive.

That attack—a “fiery impression,” according to the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications—came just days before the Kremlin pulled the battered 810th Naval Infantry Brigade off the front line in order to replenish its losses.

Ukrainian strikes on Lgov help to explain why 50,000 or more Russians along with 12,000 North Korean reinforcements haven’t yet been able to eject 20,000 Ukrainians from Kursk, despite relentlessly attacking the Ukrainian salient from all sides for two months. Russia “is still battling on its own territory and has been unable to drive Ukraine out of Kursk Oblast,” Finnish analyst Joni Askola noted. “It's quite pathetic!”

But the Russians’ failures in Kursk aren’t just the result of their own incompetence. These failures are also the consequence of a successful campaign of deep strikes by Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians are hitting Russian assault groups with mines, drones and artillery as the Russians bear down on Ukrainian positions—and they’re also disrupting Russian logistics, reinforcements and command by hitting them with rockets from tens of miles away.

The risk for the Ukrainians is that their best deep-strike munitions still come from the United States, the United Kingdom and France. And while British and French aid should continue, American aid is in jeopardy. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” his administration would “probably” reduce U.S. support for Ukraine after it assumes office on Jan. 20.

The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump during his first term of office in 2019 for leaning on Ukrainian officials to provide damaging information on his political rivals, including President Joe Biden.

Anticipating a sharp reduction in aid under Trump, the outgoing Biden administration is rushing billions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine in its final few weeks. An aid package the White House announced on Tuesday includes a whopping $2.5 billion worth of equipment and ammunition, including “thousands” of rockets for Ukraine’s HIMARS launchers.