Colonel (retired) Vilis Tsurov in front of the FACTS: Moscow threatens with a nuclear weapon if Russian territory is att

It's been a week since Ukraine's stunning invasion of Russia. Is Volodymyr Zelensky's adventurous move paying off… Are the Russians humiliated, will they move part of their forces from the Donbass to the south against their will? On the topic before FACTS, the o.z. Col. Vilis Tsurov, Chairman of the Board of the Union of Officers of the "Atlantic" Reserve.

- Col. Tsurov, can we define the invasion of Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region as a new phase of the war?
- Absolutely.

- What is the purpose of this Ukrainian attack?
- There can be many goals. From a military point of view, the most logical thing would be to create a sanitary zone that would not allow many strikes on Kharkov. A month ago there was a lot of active strikes, a lot of destruction, a lot of casualties and something had to be done. The Urayin forces, in my opinion, pushed out the front end of the front, they did not expect the attack on Kharkov to begin in such a way. So what we're seeing is kind of a payback, a compensation that the Russians will be slowed down. Ukrainians have been preparing this for a long time. I guess it's since they attacked Kharkiv because they learned their lesson.

- From a military point of view, what did they achieve?
- With this offensive, they hit part of the tactical-operational reserves of the Russians, took some of the strategic objects to neutralize them as a guard.

- Ukrainians won Russian territory, but how long can they keep it?
- Here the question is not about retention, because everything is relative. After liquidating the operational reserves of the Russians, the Ukrainians thus extend the period in which they will not be attacked. Another goal of the Ukrainians is to take prisoners. In war it is so - he who attacks has a greater advantage in taking prisoners than he who defends. The fact is that until now Ukraine did not have such a quantity of prisoners of war that they could exchange for their own. And now, as far as information goes, about 500 Russian soldiers are captured. We heard Zelensky thanking the army for taking so many prisoners of war. But here it must be said that in these areas the so-called “term workers“ – soldiers who are on active duty, and they surrender very easily. They are young boys, they don't want to fight, they want to go to Europe to study. From another point of view, these regions - Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod regions, have a mixed population and were once part of the Kyiv province. We see how the population does not want to evacuate, and Putin gives them 10,000 rubles each just to decide to evacuate. I wouldn't be surprised if people in these areas want to cross over to Ukraine after the country enters the European Union. Also, in these areas there was no great mobilization among the people in favor of the Russian army. This forced Putin to mobilize people from within. So, from a strategic point of view, the destruction of the operational reserves will cause the Russians to draw on other reserves intended for the front, which is further south. Thus, in practice, the offensive actions of the Russian Federation will be slowed down.

- We heard that Russia is threatening a cruel revenge…
- They – the threats, they always are. And the Arab world threatened to treat Israel harshly, but you have seen something like that happen. “The Cruel“ Revenge rests on opportunities at the moment. This is in a political aspect. But the attack on Ukraine is the first seizure of Russian territory since World War II. This is something new, strange if we look at it in a military-political aspect. And what is the Russian doctrine!? Isn't Moscow threatening with a nuclear weapon if Russian territory is attacked, but not using it... So they should have already used a nuclear weapon, but they are not using it, and they will not use it.

- There is also a large nuclear power plant in this area…
- Most likely, she is also a goal of the Ukrainians and they will get to her. The nuclear power plant is one of the largest for the three districts and supplies them with electricity. Electricity consumption there is not as high as in our country, because they do not have many air conditioners and electric stoves. But this plant covers the three regions, and if its capacity is actually reduced, another effect will occur - as happened with the Zaporozhye NPP and the crisis. Next, the forces that are in Russia's operational reserve are very poorly prepared, because most of them are conducted as mobilization groups, they are trained, and there are also temporarily serving with them, who are leaders. Information is conflicting. If we are talking about 1000 square kilometers that are under the control of Ukraine, if we listen to what Zelensky says, and in this case he has no reason to lie. And I think that this success of the Ukrainians will not have much impact on the talks that are being talked about, because Ukraine has clearly declared that until all the territory is liberated, it will not stop.

But I expect, as some added extras, that these republics will ask to join it in time.

If the goal now is primarily the strategic direction towards Moscow, this is the biggest battle since World War II. Then we know that Hitler stopped before Moscow because he did not have the physical and mechanized ability to continue, he went down and made the biggest battle at the Kursk Arc to approach Moscow from the southeast. We saw how long it took Prigozhin to reach Moscow with some 2,000 men, one, two or three brigades in number. With this offensive, the Ukrainians made the biggest blow against Russia. We see from footage how they hit a Russian column that was coming to help. We are talking about truck loads, and 500 Russian servicemen were killed in the attack. The Russians don't have the capacity to move tracked machinery over such distances, they don't have the capacity for transport, and the military moves on highways, and that's how they become noticeable. The Ukrainians are working very well at the moment with drones, which are their production.

So they hit the airport in Lipetsk, which is 300 km inland from the front line.

And this airport was the main one for the attacks on Kharkiv. Ukrainians know very well which are the points from which planes took off and from which they were shot at. One of the latest summaries indicates that the Ukrainians destroyed 67 Russian artillery installations. These are all these installations that fired at Kharkiv from depth. Thus, the Ukrainians increase the security of their second largest city. The reduction of Russian operational reserves to some extent also helps to reduce the strikes on Kiev. Thus, only strategic missiles can reach the capital. The Ukrainians use their own drone production very well. In Ukraine, drones of a higher level are already being produced, if we compare them with Russian ones. Ukrainians produce drones with artificial intelligence that can travel 1,800 km. So they struck northeast of Moscow, and Putin wondered where they had come from. They passed through the Kurk direction, and not through the protected one, which is west of Moscow. And the interesting thing now is that the Ukrainians attack only military targets, and they have no strikes on civilian objects. And this is happening despite the fact that Ukraine has not yet received the large arms deliveries from the USA and the EU.