Revealed: Russia anticipated Kursk incursion months in advance, seized papers show
Exclusive: Documents contain months of warnings about possible Ukrainian advance and also reveal concerns about morale
Shaun Walker in Kyiv and
Pjotr Sauer
Fri 20 Sep 2024 00.00 EDT
Russia’s military command had anticipated Ukraine’s incursion into its Kursk region and had been making plans to prevent it for several months, according to a cache of documents that the Ukrainian army said it had seized from abandoned Russian positions in the region.
The disclosure makes the disarray among Russian forces after Ukraine’s attack in early August all the more embarrassing.
The documents, shared with the Guardian, also reveal Russian concerns about morale in the ranks in Kursk, which intensified after the suicide of a soldier at the front who had reportedly been in a “prolonged state of depression due to his service in the Russian army”.
Unit commanders are given instructions to ensure soldiers consume Russian state media daily to maintain their “psychological condition”.
The Guardian could not independently verify the authenticity of the documents, though they bear the hallmarks of genuine Russian army communications.
In late August, the Guardian met the Ukrainian special operations team who seized them,
hours after they had left Russian territory. The team said they had taken Russian interior ministry, FSB and army documents from buildings in the Kursk region and later provided a selection to view and photograph.
Some of the documents are printed orders distributed to various units, while others are handwritten logs recording events and concerns at specific positions.
The earliest entries are dated late in 2023, while the most recent documents are from just six weeks before Ukraine launched its incursion into the Kursk region on 6 August.