F-16s Wipe Out Massive Russian Columns on the Road! - RFU News

Today, there are a lot of interesting updates from the Belgorod direction.

Here, Russians are deploying a massive amount of infantry to push Ukrainians out of their second incursion across the Russian border, before new Ukrainian reinforcements can consolidate their positions. However, before Russians could get into position, Ukrainians used a devastating series of air strikes to wipe out Russian troop concentrations left and right, absolutely destroying the Russian response.

The goal of the Ukrainian forces in this area is to disperse the Russian focus away from their offensive in the Sumy region. To achieve this, Ukrainians aim to fight on a battlefield of their choosing by deploying forces to strengthen their incursion in the Belgorod region. The main Ukrainian disadvantage in Sumy is that the Russians are concentrating the entirety of their former Kursk contingent in one place, which consists of approximately 62 thousand soldiers, with only half of the previously active frontline length.

By expanding the fighting into more favorable terrain in Belgorod, Ukrainian forces can stretch Russian lines and gain a tactical edge. Unlike northern Sumy, Belgorod offers a larger network of minor roads, complicating Russian efforts to monitor and target Ukrainian logistics. Dense forests provide ample cover for troop movements, concealed positions, and storaging equipment. Moreover, Ukraine has already destroyed key bridges and river crossings in the area, further weakening Russia’s limited logistical network and complicating their ability to sustain operations.

This sets perfect conditions for a long-lasting Ukrainian incursion in the Belgorod region. Ukrainian soldiers shared videos of them moving additional forces across the border to properly reinforce and consolidate their newly gained positions.

Russian commanders understood that letting Ukrainian forces consolidate their gains would lead to another costly, grinding effort to retake the area. In response, they rushed reinforcements to the front, playing directly into Ukraine’s strategy. However, these deployments were severely hindered by Ukrainians already having destroyed several critical river crossings, resulting in predictable transport routes, allowing Ukrainian forces to easily track and target incoming Russian troops.

Geolocated combat footage from Goptarivka shows Russian soldiers hiding in the basements of two residential houses before being struck by a Ukrainian precision strike. The powerful explosions leveled both structures, breaching even the basements and killing most of the soldiers. Ukrainian forces used JDAMs to destroy a Russian border post being used as an ammunition depot, along with a BMP-2 and a squad of Russian soldiers parked nearby.

Ukrainian reconnaissance drones also tracked down Russian movements, and followed them to a base, before directing several HIMARS cluster strikes onto the base, as well as on several branches of the base spread out across the forests. The strikes were devastating, as Russian munitions and equipment quickly went up in flames, and even the wounded could not make it out alive.

Additionally, the extended 28-kilometer range of the JDAM bombs allowed Ukrainian pilots to even strike targets deeper in the Russian rear, hitting a column of five Russian trucks transporting soldiers to the front, resulting in 60 dead recently drafted Russian soldiers, as reported by nearby Russian soldiers filming the aftermath. Another video shows Russian soldiers driving past a burning truck just recently hit by a Ukrainian strike, transporting ammunition which is slowly cooking off.

Lastly, Ukrainian forces targeted Russian trench complexes in open fields and tree lines with multiple JDAM precision bombs, striking the strongholds with devastating accuracy. Using two to four JDAMs per target, the goal was to eliminate entrenched Russian troops, force unit rotations, and disrupt planned operations. These strikes suggest that Ukrainians had either already neutralized higher-value targets in the rear or now possesses the operational capacity to confidently conduct precision airstrikes even on fortified Russian frontline positions.

Overall, the Ukrainian forces successfully fixed the Russian forces in the Belgorod region by forcing them to relocate forces from their Sumy offensive, forcing them to navigate through narrow, predictable logistics routes for the Ukrainians to eliminate them with precision strikes. President Zelenskyy confirmed that Ukrainian troops are operating in the Belgorod region and that they secured an area of thirteen square kilometers in Russian territory. Zelenskyy emphasized that the main goal is to safeguard the Sumy and Kharkiv regions from Russian offensives and also to continue to draw Russian resources away from the main fighting in Eastern Ukraine.