Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi said that the Kursk operation forced Russia to reorient 67,000 of its best soldiers and the remaining DPRK contingent to defend this area. He said this in an interview with journalist Andriy Tsapliyenko, UNN reports.
On May 10, the enemy launched an offensive in the Kharkiv sector, and we were actually ahead of the enemy in deploying our reserves along the border - from Sumy to Kharkiv. The enemy did not expect that we had brigades that had been withdrawn to the reserve to restore combat capability
According to him, the enemy believed that the situation in the Ukrainian Armed Forces was critical after Avdiivka.
"When we began to withdraw our units and take up the defense, the enemy decided to attack with the forces at his disposal, about 43,000, which were deployed near Belgorod," the commander-in-chief added.
He said that the Kursk operation was supposed to isolate the enemy and force him to withdraw some troops from the main directions.
Thanks to a detailed analysis, we found a weakness in the Kursk direction. We were able to withdraw 3 brigades of the Airborne Forces and several other brigades...Russia was forced to defend itself and actually transferred its composition, we had 67 thousand of the best military and additionally what was left of the DPRK