Kursk: Why did Russian military intelligence not see the coming Ukrainian incursion?
Today’s session of ‘Judging Freedom’ with Judge Andrew Napolitano opened and closed with brief discussions of two leading personalities from my university alma maters, Columbia and Harvard, who have been in the news these past 24 hours.
With regard to Columbia, today’s newspapers reported the resignation of their president, Minouche Shafik, following a turbulent year on campus during which she made sworn enemies among the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli factions among students and faculty, and found herself at the center of media attention for bringing police on campus to arrest peaceful demonstrators. Shame on her. Shame on Columbia. Although, compared to the Harvard-related news below, Columbia does not look too bad: at least there are divided opinions on campus over the Palestinian question.
With respect to Harvard, it was my fellow student from the graduating class of 1967, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal (D), who was brought up in closing minutes of our chat by Judge Napolitano. Blumenthal was in the news for singing from the same anti-Russian songbook as Senator Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina and praising the Ukrainians to the skies for their (so-far) successful military incursion in the Kursk oblast of the Russian Federation.
Going back to the days when we both were students, the then Democratic Senator from Connecticut Abraham Ribicoff was a voice of reason in international affairs. Regrettably during all of his government service Blumenthal has been quite the opposite, a dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warrior with little concern for where his hubristic aggressiveness vis-à-vis a nuclear superpower might take us. It is all the more regrettable that Blumenthal’s predilection for ideology over diplomacy and co-existence appears to be shared by the overwhelming majority of faculty and undergraduate students in Cambridge, Massachusetts today. They are all-in on the green agenda and combating climate change, but don’t care a bit if we stumble our way into a nuclear war that ends life on this planet. All of which makes me wonder about the value of a liberal arts education in the Ivy League when minds are closed to reality.
*****
Perhaps the most interesting moments in Judging Freedom today centered on how the Russian general staff seems to have missed entirely the coming incursion by Ukraine’s elite, best NATO trained and best NATO equipped troops into the RF province (oblast) of Kursk some nine days ago. Was this a gross failure of their military intelligence or is there some other explanation?
Among my peers in the alternative media there has been some extravagant speculation on this matter. In particular, I am informed that the British blogger Alexander Mercouris has suggested that the Russian general staff knew all about the coming attack but did not react, seeing in this an opportunity to spring a trap on the invaders and change the course of the war at one blow.
I was not persuaded by this argument. Had there been such a cynical plan by Russian generals to put up with civilian deaths and the capture of their own conscript soldiers for the sake of the bigger prize of setting up a ‘cauldron,’ then why is it that nine days out we see no trap being sprung? Why is it that to all appearances the Russians are scrambling to bring soldiers and heavy equipment from Central Russia down to Kursk to engage the enemy?
Indeed, a far more plausible explanation was published yesterday on the website of the premier Indian English language global broadcaster WION. This came at the end of a report lasting several minutes describing Vladimir Putin’s new appointee to coordinate the operation in Kursk to expel/annihilate the Ukrainian invaders, a certain Aleksei Dyumin. This appointment removed responsibility for Kursk from Russia’s overall top military commander, General Valery Gerasimov.
I had seen mention of Dyumin’s getting this assignment in other media, but those reports only spoke of his being a Putin loyalist who for more than eight years headed the presidential security team. To put it more colloquially, Dyumin was said to be Putin’s former bodyguard. Such a description in major media was, of course, meant to ridicule the appointee and his boss. It was like saying that the head of Russia’s first and only private company of mercenaries, Prigozhin, was just the former cook to Putin. Or like saying that Vladimir Putin is himself just a former low level KGB analyst who served in East Germany.
All of these comments are willfully derogatory and misleading. Like Progozhin, Dyumin clearly has extraordinary talent and has succeeded as a presidential aide serving in various temporary functions such as one year as acting governor of the Tula oblast.
To return to the key information that came at the end of the WION report: they tell us that the Russian senior commander general Valery Gerasimov had in fact been informed by Russian military intelligence that Ukraine was preparing an assault on Kursk, but he dismissed it and took no action. It was for this very reason that he has been relieved of responsibility for the military operation in Kursk. And Dyumin is not only a very capable administrator who is close to the President and outside the military command hierarchy which is self-serving in Russia, as it is everywhere else, but he also happens to hail from…Kursk.
As I mention in this interview, I believe that Gerasimov will not hold his current post for long. Let us recall that in the spring of this year when Mr. Prigozhin was publicly feuding with the regular army bosses in Moscow he denounced both Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Head of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, saying both were incompetent and harming the proper execution of the Special Military Operation. Shoigu has since been kicked upstairs, so to speak, and has become Vladimir Putin’s roving ambassador, as we saw from his visit to Teheran a little more than a week ago. Gerasimov’s turn to be kicked upstairs or just kicked out is sure to come.
*****
In this 25 minute chat with Judge Napolitano, we discussed a number of other topical issues from the Kursk operation. For that, I invite readers to watch the video.
https://rumble.com/v5b1klp-judgingfreedom.html
[note: this video will be reposted on youtube next week, when technical issues are resolved]
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024