Authored by Pepe Escobar,

An extremely serious debate is already raging among selected circles of power/intelligence in Moscow – and the heart of the matter could not be more incandescent…

To cut to the chase: what really happened in Kursk? Was the Russian Ministry of Defense caught napping? Or did they see it coming and profited to set up a deadly trap for Kiev?

Well-informed players willing to share a few nuggets on condition of anonymity all stress the extreme sensitivity of it all. An intel pro though has offered what may be interpreted as a precious clue: “It is rather surprising to see such a concentration of force was unnoticed by satellite and drone surveillance at Kursk, but I would not exaggerate its importance.”

Another intel pro prefers to stress that “the foreign intel section is weak as it was very badly run.” This is a direct reference to the state of affairs after former security overseer Nikolai “Yoda” Patrushev, during Putin’s post-inauguration reshuffle, was transferred from his post as secretary of the Security Council to serve as a special presidential aide.

The sources, cautiously, seem to converge on a very serious possibility: “There seems to have been a breakdown in intel; they do not seem to have noticed the accumulation of troops at the Kursk border”.

Another analyst though has offered a way more specific scenario, according to which a hawkish military faction, spread across the Ministry of Defense and the intel apparatus – and antagonistic to the new Minister of Defense Belousov, an economist – let the Ukrainian invasion proceed with two objectives in mind: set a trap for Kiev’s top enemy commanders and troops, who were diverted from the – collapsing – Donbass front; and put extra pressure on Putin to finally go for the head of the snake and finish off the war.

This hawkish faction, incidentally, regards Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov as “totally incompetent”, in the words of one intel pro. There’s no smoking gun, but Gerasimov allegedly ignored several warnings about a Ukrainian buildup near the Kursk border.

A retired intel pro is even more controversial. He complains that “traitors of Russia” actually “stripped three regions from troops to surrender them to the Ukrainians.” Now, these “traitors of Russia” will be able “to ‘exchange’ the city of Suzha for leaving the fake country of Ukraine and promote it as an inevitable solution.”

Incidentally, only this Thursday Belousov started chairing a series of meetings to improve security in the “three regions” – Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.

Hawks in the siloviki apparatus don’t make it a secret that Gerasimov should be fired – and replaced by fabled General Sergey “Armageddon” Surovikin. They also enthusiastically support the FSB’s Alexander Bortnikov – who de facto solved the extremely murky Prigozhin affair – as the man now really supervising The Big Picture in Kursk.

And the next one is Belgorod…

Well, it’s complicated.

President Putin’s reaction to the Kursk invasion was visible in his body language. He was furious: for the flagrant military/intel failure; for the obvious loss of face; and for the fact that this buries any possibility of rational dialogue about ending the war.

Yet he managed to turn the upset around in no time, by designating Kursk as a counter-terrorist operation (CTO); supervised by the FSB’s Bortnikov; and with an inbuilt “take no prisoners” rationale. Every Ukrainian in Kursk not willing to surrender is a potential target – set for elimination. Now or later, no matter how long it takes.

Bortnikov is the hands-on specialist. Then there’s the Overseer of the whole military/civilian response: Alexey Dyumin, the new secretary of the State Council, who among other previous posts was the deputy head of the special operations division of GRU (military intel). Dyumin does not respond directly to the Ministry of Defense nor the FSB: he is reporting directly to the President.

Translation: Gerasimov now seems to be at best a figurehead in the whole Kursk drama. The men in charge are Bortnikov and Dyumin.

The Kursk P.R. gambit is set to massively fail. Essentially, the Ukrainian forces are moving away from their lines of communication and supplies into Russian territory. A parallel can be made with what happened to Field Marshall von Paulus at Stalingrad when the German Army became overextended.

The Russians are already in the process of cutting off the Ukrainians in Kursk – breaking off their lines of supply. What’s left of the crack soldiers launched into Kursk would have to turn back, facing Russians both at their front and back. Disaster looms.

Irrepressible commander of the Akhmat special forces, Major General Apti Alaudinov, confirmed on Rossiya-1 TV that at least 12,000 Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) entered Kursk, including a lot of foreigners (Brits, French, Poles). That will turn out to be a “take no prisoners” on a massive scale.

Anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows Kursk is a NATO operation – conceived with a high degree of probability by an Anglo-American combo supervising the Ukronazi cannon fodder.

Anything Kiev does depends on American ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and NATO weapons systems of course operated by NATO personnel.

Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the sweaty green T-shirt actor in Kiev, admitted that Kiev “discussed” the attack “with Western partners”. The “Western partners” – Washington, London, Berlin – in full cowardly regalia, deny it.

Bortnikov won’t be fooled. He succinctly stated, on the record, that this was a Kiev terrorist attack supported by the West.

We are now entering the stage of hardcore positioning combat bound to destroy villages and towns. It will be ugly. Russian military analysts remark that if a buffer zone had been preserved way back in March 2022, mid-range artillery activity would have been restricted to Ukrainian territory. Yet another controversial decision by the Russian General Staff.

Russia will eventually solve the Kursk drama – mopping up small Ukrainian groups in a methodically lethal way. Yet very sensitive questions about how it happened – and who let it happen – simply won’t vanish. Heads will have to – figuratively – roll. Because this is just the beginning. The next incursion will be in Belgorod. Get ready for more blood on the tracks.