Saw a joke that the safest place in Russia right now is ironically surrounded by NATO countries.

"Ukraine has the right to self defense enshrined in international law," Germany's foreign ministry told POLITICO in a statement. "This is not limited to its own territory." Many politicians in Germany’s conservative opposition have provided even more full-throated support for the Ukrainian offensive — and the use of German weapons on Russian territory. Roderich Kiesewetter, a senior lawmaker with the Christian Democrats, told POLITICO it's totally legitimate to strike "staging areas" inside Russia with weapons donated by Germany.

"The question of whether Western weapons are involved doesn't come up because, after they are delivered, they are Ukrainian weapons," said Kiesewetter. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has so far refrained from breaking away from his summer vacation to say anything about the incursion.

Washington's approval in May was very carefully couched and limited to areas near Kharkiv. That's not the same area where Ukrainian troops surged across the border this week — in some places penetrating about 50 kilometers into Russia. But the U.S. isn't making a big deal about the incursion.

The Russian military issued a statement on Friday saying: "Attempts by individual [Ukrainian] units to break through deep into the territory in the Kursk direction are being thwarted." Kyiv has so far refrained from commenting on the operation, although President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday: "Russia brought war to our land, and it should feel what it has done."

The evidence that Ukraine is using donated weapons in its offensive is growing.

On Thursday, German tabloid Bild cited surveillance images in reporting that German-supplied Marder infantry fighting vehicles were in Russia. Berlin says it sent 120 of the vehicles. But a German government spokesperson said Friday that the government had no information of its own on the use of German weaponry in the current hostilities.

The chair of the Bundestag’s influential defense committee, Marcus Faber, a member of the FDP, told German media that Ukraine was free to use “all materials” donated, including German-made Leopard-2 battle tanks — of which 58 had been given by the close of July — in the attack. "Ukraine's attack towards Kursk is completely legitimate and makes military sense," he added on social media. "We can only wish the Ukrainian defenders every success."

Kyiv’s Offensive Gets a Greenish Light From Its Allies – POLITICO

Balakleya 2.0 and reinforcements for reporting. What's happening in the Kursk region

The Ukrainian Armed Forces continue their operation in the Kursk region. The peculiarity of the military actions there is that the Ukrainian army uses mobile armored groups, which have sufficient firepower to destroy Russian armored vehicles and tanks, and also carry infantry capable of quickly clearing Russian positions and acting as support for the "armor" in populated areas.

Something similar happened in the Balakleya area in the fall of 2022. Both there and in the Kursk region, the Russian Armed Forces had a "line of fortifications" only on paper. Both then and now, the Ukrainian Armed Forces act quickly and to great depth, supporting the movement of armored groups with drones (there are now dozens of times more of them than there were in the fall of 2022) and electronic warfare operations. Russian units are left without communication, do not understand where the enemy is, and orders from headquarters only worsen the situation, because they are based on outdated or embellished information.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces do not try to occupy populated areas, but simply pass through them after reconnaissance by drones and infantry, or bypass them. This makes it possible to take by surprise the scattered Russian units that believe that they are deep in the rear and do not expect the enemy to appear.

Since midday on August 8, the Ukrainian Armed Forces began to reinforce positions on the Rylsk-Sudzha and Sudzha-Kursk highways. Since Ukrainian units control most of the bypass and local roads, Russian troops can move almost exclusively along federal highways. The Russians are pushed onto these same highways by the lack of maps and knowledge of the terrain among the commanders of the newly arrived units. They do not have time to familiarize themselves with the situation (and how can they do this, if even those who have been in the Kursk region since the first day of the Ukrainian offensive have a poor understanding of the situation) and are sent to occupy this or that point on the map, without having any idea whether the Ukrainian Armed Forces are there or not. The shortest and easiest way is to move along the highways.

This has already cost the Russian Armed Forces the destruction of a battalion column of the 44th Army Corps near the village of Oktyabrskoye, the destruction of about two dozen cars and several units of armored vehicles on the Kursk-Sudzha highway and on other roads.

According to the Russian commander of the unit, transferred to the Kursk region from the east of Ukraine on the evening of August 8, his people were transported to Kursk without equipment (it was left in the location in the occupied Ukrainian territories), the unit received tanks and infantry fighting vehicles already in the Belgorod region, and both tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were "naked", without dynamic protection and other body kits. The condition of the equipment could not be determined, it was transported on tractors. The staff major responsible for the unit's transfer demanded that they move in a column straight to Bolshoe Soldatskoe and only there unload the equipment from the platforms and deploy. As a result, the unit commander refused to follow the order and unloaded it in the Cheremoshnaya area, where the Russians had set up a tank storage base since the spring.

Those who could not argue with or tell their staff majors to go to hell moved to the designated points and either died along the way from drone strikes or missiles directed by them, or came under fire from Ukrainian armored vehicles, artillery, and infantry.

According to several Russian officers who arrived with reinforcements in the Kursk region, the Russian Armed Forces lost up to 14 infantry companies and up to 25 armored vehicles and tanks due to moving into unexplored terrain overnight and this morning, some of which were simply captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in working order. There is no visual recording of these losses yet, but they will almost certainly appear in the coming days. The Ukrainian side confirms the capture of captured equipment and new batches of prisoners.

The Russian command is trying to stabilize the situation as quickly as possible and report at least some successes, so reinforcements are being sent to the slaughter, just to report on "movement to such and such a village."

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I think that the Ukranians made a good decision to attack, but Russia has now gotten offended and will be throwing everything they have to expel Ukraine.  I hope Ukraine keeps exploiting the Russians love of long convoys, as well as its lack of initiative in unpredictable situations, and knows when to get out if need be.