- Ukraine’s new attack in Kursk is featuring some impressive drone jamming, Russian military bloggers said.
- The bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces were able to break through because of “powerful electronic warfare.”
- it’s made it difficult for Russian drone operators to work in the area, they wrote.
Ukraine launched a renewed offensive in Russia’s Kursk region on Sunday, where Russian pro-war bloggers say Kyiv’s drone jammers have been working exceptionally well.
The “Operation Z” channel, a collection of dispatches from Russian war correspondents, wrote that the attack had focused on the Bolshesoldatsky district, to the northeast of the Ukrainian-held pocket in Kursk.
“In order to break through, the Ukrainian Armed Forces covered the area with powerful electronic warfare systems, making it difficult for our UAVs to operate,” wrote the Telegram channel, which has over 1.6 million subscribers.
Razvedos Advanced Gear & Equipment, a Russian military news Telegram channel with over 152,000 subscribers, echoed those comments in a post on Sunday.
“It cannot be said that they were not expected in this direction, but they managed to VERY effectively use electronic warfare,” it wrote of the fighting in Bolshesoldatsky.
Roman Alekhine, a military blogger with about 218,000 subscribers, wrote on his channel: “The enemy has covered the attack area with electronic warfare, so many drones are useless.”
Alekhine later posted that some Russian drone operators were still able to switch to unjammed frequencies.
Sergei Kolyasnikov, another military blogger with about 498,000 subscribers, reported that about 10 Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles had entered the Bolshesoldatsky region.
“The area is covered with some powerful electronic warfare, nothing is flying at all,” he wrote.
The specifics of Ukraine’s new push this week into Russian territory are still unclear. Kyiv initially launched a surprise counteroffensive into Kursk in August, where it took an estimated 480 square miles of Russian land but has been slowly pushed back since.
Ukraine has stayed mostly silent on the matter. But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation run by Ukraine’s national security and defense council, alluded to an assault on Sunday by posting that Russian troops in Kursk “were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them.”
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukraine’s president, also hinted at an attack by writing on his Telegram channel that Russia was “getting what it deserves” in Kursk.
Meanwhile, Russia has outright declared that Ukraine had attacked again.
“On January 5, at about 09:00 Moscow time, in order to stop the advance of Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counterattack with an assault group consisting of two tanks, a barrier vehicle, and 12 combat armored vehicles with troops in the direction of the Berdin farm,” its defense ministry told state media.
As reports of Ukraine’s jamming efforts emerged, the defense ministry published a video of a Russian drone operator coordinating a tank strike on an unknown target in a forested area, saying he was working in Kursk.
The Ukrainian and Russian Defense Ministries did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Electronic warfare has increasingly been key on the battlefield as both Russia and Ukraine turn to cheap drones for reconnaissance, loitering munitions, and close-range bombing runs.
One development has seen both sides deploy wired drones. These use long fiber optic cables unfurled from a spool as the aerial system takes flight, allowing it to bypass jamming systems.
Should they become mainstream, they may pose yet another challenge for militaries that are already spending big on preparing against drone threats. The US, for example, is paying some $250 million to Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s defense startup, for 500 drones and an electronic warfare system called Pulsar.
