Chief of Staff on the Kursk operation: Initially, we planned more raid actions, but I refused

When planning the Kursk operation, the Defense Forces initially planned more raid operations, but the command abandoned this idea. This was stated in an interview with the newspaper The Washington Post said the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi.

"Initially, we planned more raids, but then I abandoned this idea because I realized that we needed this territory. We needed it for a long time," the chief emphasized.

Syrsky, commenting on the preparations for the operation, said that "victories love silence."

"They are born in silence and prepared in silence. When an information campaign is created or conducted, and everyone is shouting: "give me this, give me that," then, of course, the enemy also knows and prepares," the chief said.

This time, he added, "we had to win."

• Since the beginning of spring 2025, Russians have been regularly claiming to have complete displacement ukrainian forces from the Kursk region, but the authorities and the military claim that this is not true.
• on August 6, Syrsky stated that russia's losses in the Kursk operation amounted to more than 77,000 military killed and wounded.