Elements of an elite Ukrainian unit armed with US-made M1A1 Abrams tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles are in combat inside Russia’s Kursk region, news and official reports said Tuesday.
Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Infantry Brigade over the weekend used the American armored vehicles to conduct local counterattacks in a northeastern sector of a salient held by Kyiv’s forces inside the Russian Federation, following a surprise offensive launched on Aug. 6.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed Ukrainian forces – per most historians the first foreign army to capture Russian territory since the late 1960s, and possibly since World War II – would be wiped out or chased back into Ukraine by the end of September.
Counter-attacking Russian troops pushed the Ukrainians back in some sectors, but the Putin deadline came and went with Kyiv’s forces still in control of some 800 square kilometers (309 square miles) of Russian territory. Fighting in recent weeks has centered along major roads leading towards the Russian border town Sudzha, at the base of the incursion.
According to a Tuesday statement by Army Group North, the Russian headquarters coordinating operations against the invading Ukrainians, on Monday, Kyiv’s troops returned to the attack and pushed combat forces into frontline villages some 18 kilometers (11 miles) northwest of Sudzha. Russian defenses, according to that official Kremlin account, repelled the Ukrainian assaults led by 47th Mechanized Brigade.
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December, 20, 2024
Kyiv’s forces suffered heavy losses including 50 men, one infantry fighting vehicle, and a tank, the Russian army announcement claimed.
Drone video published by 47th Brigade, the unit operating the American weapons, on Oct. 21 showed a different picture. Images showed a single Abrams tank and two Bradley infantry fighting vehicles advancing along a road inside a village and firing on buildings and possible defensive positions.
At times more than one vehicle concentrated fire on a single target. There was no visible Russian return fire. Kyiv Post geo-located the images to the village of Novoivanovka, in Russia’s Kursk region.
Tuesday battle and news reports said Novoivanovka was effectively in no-man’s land, with neither Russian nor Ukrainian troops in full-time control of the village. Kremlin-loyal media in mid-October reported the village was fully liberated, but recent reports have contradicted the claim.
The Ukraine-supporting operational situation tracking group, DeepState, on Tuesday reported a static front along the full perimeter of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, with neither side gaining nor losing ground. Novoivanovka was in gray zone territory. Ukrainian forces captured the village on Aug. 12 and Russian counterattacks forced an evacuation on Oct. 10, data compiled by the group showed.
According to a Tuesday report by the news agency RBK-Ukraina, the Kremlin has set a “new” deadline for the removal of Ukrainian forces from Russian territory for Feb. 1, 2025, and that as many as 40,000 troops backed by heavy firepower would be committed.
The Ukrainian Army General Staff (AGS), in a Tuesday morning situation update, reported that over the past 24 hours almost half all aviation bombs dropped by Russian combat aircraft during the day’s fighting – 68 of 136 – anywhere on the entire front, had targeted Ukrainian forces in Kursk region.
Along the roughly 80-kilometer-long (50-mile-long) line of contact separating Russian and Ukrainian troops inside of Russia, on Monday, Kyiv Post researchers found evidence mostly of small-scale fighting between units numbering less than 30 men, and no large-scale ground combat.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Sunday evening national television statement, said units like 47th Brigade that are fighting inside Russia would hold their ground. Ukrainian control of Russian territory is the only way to prevent Russian bombardment of border regions, and critical leverage in negotiations with the Kremlin, he argued.
“We must remember that the Kursk operation serves a strategic purpose: the war must return to the territory from which it came. This is true when a buffer zone is created on the territory of the aggressor. Also, the Kursk operation allowed Ukraine to do more active work regarding exchanges and returning our soldiers from Russian captivity,” Zelensky said.
“We are holding our positions and we will not allow the enemy to expand the war onto our land,” Zelensky said.
First deployed to combat in June 2023, the heavily armed 47th Mechanized Brigade, following a bloody baptism of fire, has become a go-to reserve unit frequently used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) high command to plug gaps and stabilize battle crises. Its men and vehicles had fought in the eastern Donbas sector for almost a year, before being pulled off the line and being sent into Russia, Kyiv Post researchers found.
The Novoivanivka engagement marked the first hard confirmation of Ukrainian deployment of the Abrams tank and Bradley infantry fighting vehicle to territory and combat inside of Russia.
Both Abrams tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles are major US ground warfare weapons systems whose transfer to Ukraine was controversial in US politics because of fears, at the time, that the Kremlin might see the handover as escalatory and retaliate aggressively.
The Bradley is a relatively light armored personnel carrier much praised by Ukrainian infantry for its excellent cross-country mobility and ability to take a hit and keep crew and passengers alive. It was first received by the 47th Brigade in April 2023.
Companies of the 47th aboard Bradleys led a major Ukrainian offensive in the southern Zaporizhzhia sector in June 2023. The widely predicted attacks failed against well-prepared Russian minefields and dense anti-tank defenses.
According to the weapons-tracking group Oryx, 16 Bradleys were destroyed in those battles. Overall, the US has sent Ukraine “more than” 300 Bradleys, an Oct. 15 Pentagon fact sheet said.
Abrams tanks first entered the 47 Brigade inventory in September 2023. According to field reports, crews praise the tanks for high speed, thick armor, and excellent fire control systems, but criticize Abrams’ 65-ton weight and high maintenance turbine engine. Unlike the Bradley, which has seen repeated follow-up shipments to the Ukrainian military, the Pentagon has sent only a single 31-tank batch to Kyiv.
Australia on Oct. 17 promised Ukraine it would donate 49 M1 tanks it was planning to write off. A delivery date has not been announced.
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