Ukrainian forces have retaken the village of Kindrativka in the Khotyn community of Sumy Oblast, a settlement that has been under pressure since Russia opened a new front in the north. The Kursk military grouping officially confirmed the liberation, adding that “stabilization measures are underway.”

Why the Sumy front matters

In late May 2025, Russian troops launched a cross-border offensive from Kursk into northern Sumy Oblast. Moscow described the push as an attempt to create a “buffer zone,” hoping to pull Ukrainian forces away from the eastern and southern fronts.

According to Ukrainian and Western estimates, around 50,000 Russian troops are concentrated in Kursk Oblast just across the border, serving as a staging force for these attacks. Despite weeks of assaults, Russia has been unable to make significant breakthroughs around key villages such as Yunakivka.

Early reports and enemy losses

The analytical outlet DeepState first reported Kindrativka’s liberation on 25 July.

“The 225th Separate Assault Battalion has completed the clearing and securing of Kindrativka,” DeepState said.

They added that this is the second village the unit has liberated in the region and that “the enemy suffered heavy losses during both operations.”

“Sweat, blood and courage” behind the advance

Military analyst Bohdan Myroshnykov described the scale of effort behind the gains.

“Our troops freed Kindrativka in Sumy Oblast a few days ago,” he wrote.

He stressed that these successes have been followed by smaller, localized advances, but at a very high cost.

“Behind every liberated settlement, behind every recaptured position, there is an entire story – a story of hard‑won success, sweat, blood, and courage,” Myroshnykov explained.

He noted that bit by bit, Ukrainian soldiers are cutting through the enemy’s flanks along the main axis of the Russian assault in Sumy Oblast.

“The occupiers still haven’t fully captured Yunakivka. It’s hard to say how many weeks their infantry has been throwing itself against a brick wall there,” he added.

A gradual but determined push

While retaking Kindrativka marks an important step, the fighting in Sumy Oblast remains intense. Ukrainian troops continue to erode Russian positions, holding ground despite relentless pressure from across the border.

The Russian air force recently dropped 250 glide bombs on a single treeline near Andriivka in Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast, potentially making that roughly 3-km-long copse the most bombed place on Earth at the time.

It didn’t help. The Russian regiments and brigades the air force was supporting with its intensive—some might say “insane”—aerial bombardment have been defeated and forced to withdraw from the area.

The Russian KAB glide bombs, which range 25 miles or farther under pop-out wings and satellite guidance, rained down as a trio of Russian units—the 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade—were “really struggling near Kindrativka,” just outside Andriivka three miles south of the border with Russia, according to analyst Moklasen.

A week ago, the Russians were in danger of being surrounded and cut off from their supply lines and reinforcements. Instead, they retreated last weekend, marking the latest setback for the 50,000-strong Russian force in Sumy.

Shortly after drone-harried Ukrainian forces retreated from western Russia’s Kursk Oblast in mid-March, bringing to an abrupt end a controversial seven-month Ukrainian incursion, Russian units including the 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade counterattacked—and crossed into Sumy.

But they counterattacked on foot, bringing with them virtually zero combat vehicles. While far from unusual as the Russians hold back their surviving armor, the Sumy operation underscored the risks that accompany infantry-first tactics. 

Having lost more than 20,000 armored vehicles and other heavy equipment, the Russians made a deliberate decision in recent months to pull back their surviving armor—and send regiments and brigades into battle on foot or on motorcycles.

The shift to infantry and bike tactics preserves a vanishing resource (armored vehicles) by replacing it with an abundant resource (infantry and bikes). With generous cash bonuses sometimes equaling three years of pay, the Kremlin has managed to recruit 30,000 fresh troops a month—enough to replace the roughly 30,000 troops who are killed or wounded in Ukraine every month.

The downside is apparent in Sumy. “It certainly becomes much harder to achieve any sort of … call it a big and beautiful breakthrough,” explained Ukrainian-American war correspondent David Kirichenko.

Worse for the Russians, heavier Ukrainian units have been able to defeat lighter Russian units in some sectors, even though the Ukrainian formations are desperately short of trained infantry—and the Russian formations have infantry in abundance. 

Sumy face-off

The Ukrainian 79th and 95th Air Assault Brigades and the 225th Assault Regiment, equipped with German-made Marder and US-made Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles, faced off against the vehicle-less 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade in Sumy.

If the Russians had an advantage, it was in the air. Despite heavy losses in the 41 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, the Russian air force still has 10 times as many warplanes as the Ukrainian air force has—and many more glide bombs. 

For years, the Russians have been dropping around 100 KABs a day all along the 1,100-km front line. In recent weeks, many of those KABs fell on that isolated treeline in Sumy. It’s possible the Ukrainian 79th and 95th Air Assault Brigades and the 225th Assault Regiment had positioned infantry or artillery in the treeline. It’s also possible the Russians simply believed the Ukrainians had placed forces under those trees.

In any event, the Russians bombed and bombed with what Moklasen described as an “insane” number of KABs. How many, if any, hit anything of value is unclear. Ukrainian jamming can throw the KABs off course.

Shrugging off the bombardment, mechanized Ukrainian troops flanked the de-mechanized Russians near Kindrativka last week. The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted Ukrainian counterattacks in Sumy that could “complicate the enemy’s advance and threaten the encirclement of Russian troops operating in Andriivka.”

But the Russians escaped just in time, fleeing northeast and straightening the Russian line in Sumy. The end result, however, is that the Russians control less of Sumy now compared to a week ago. Even a record number of glide bombs pummeling a tiny fragment of forest hasn’t been able to reverse the Russians’ declining fortunes in the oblast.

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When Russia pivoted to motorcycle-based offense, Ukraine began shifting to anti-motorcycle defense. There were delays, but new bike-beating tools are proliferating across the 1,100-km front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. 

It’s possible these new tools are already slowing Russia’s summer offensive.

Some Ukrainian drones are dropping traffic spikes—unfolding ribbons with tire-popping metal spikes—in order to block roads ahead of Russian motorcycle assaults.

The traffic spikes work. A video montage posted online by the Ukrainian 82nd Air Assault Brigade recently depicts drones dropping the spikes by night near Pokrovsk—and causing Russian bike troops to crash by day. The brigade apparently sends grenade-dropping bomber drones and explosive first-person-view drones to strike the ejected riders after they crash.

For at least a year now, Ukrainian drone teams including the famed Birds of Magyar have been seeding roads behind the Russian line with pointy chunks of metal called “caltrops” that, like the traffic spikes, can pop tires and stop traffic. 

The caltrops, along with the traffic spikes and other simple countermeasures are taking on greater importance now that Russian regiments have largely shifted to infantry and motorcycle assaults. 

Having written off more than 20,000 tanks, fighting vehicles and other heavy equipment to Ukrainian mines, artillery, missiles and drones since widening its war on Ukraine in February 2022, Russia is mostly holding back the few combat vehicles it has left. Perhaps saving them for a future war somewhere else in Europe.

There’s a cold logic to the tactical shift. “Motorcycles give them a higher chance of success in their operations,” Ukrainian-American war correspondent David Kirichenko said of the Russians. “Just as long as you can drive fast and maneuver through the mines, then you’re able to more quickly assault the Ukrainian positions.”

“The Russians hope that with enough charges, enough soldiers over a few weeks can maybe gather into the bunker of a building—and when they get there, they start digging in really, really deep and try to build trenches,” Kirichenko added. 

“Over time, once they have enough soldiers that aggregate in that area and they’re ready to assault the neighboring street, the Russians will launch glide bombs, launch artillery fire, everything that they have—and allow their soldiers to conduct these meat-grinder assaults, street by street.”

But the speedy Russian bike assaults work only as long as the Ukrainians are still basing their defensive plans around slower mechanized assaults. It’s evident that some simple countermeasures could stop the bikes in their tracks. Recall that, back in May, one Russian motorcycle soldier came to a bad end when he tried and failed to jump his bike across a wide Ukrainian trench. He crashed into the earthworks, apparently dying in the impact. 

Classic tools

“Ukraine can adapt with, like, classical tools of anti-infantry defense—everything from anti-personnel mines, caltrops against, like, light vehicles so that they puncture their tires and they crash somewhere, barbed wire or modern-day concertina wire,” explained Jakub Janovksy, an analyst with the Oryx intelligence collective. 

“If Ukraine manages to scale these defenses sufficiently to make light infantry, and what I would call ‘motorized cavalry assaults,’ non-viable—or at least much less useful than they currently are—Russia would be in quite significant bind,” Janovsky said.

While the Russians could pivot back to mechanized assaults, they’d still have to contend with the same mines, artillery, missiles and drones that rendered mechanized assaults unacceptably costly. Moreover, they’d have fewer vehicles to devote to a fresh round of mechanized attacks. 

“This war has already chewed through a very significant percentage of what Russia had,” Janovsky explained, “and it’s a question of how much they intend to preserve beyond this war for potential future use in other conflicts.” 

“So I think this is a potential weakness of the current Russian approach,” Janovsky said. Russia deployed bike troops to speed up the pace of its assaults and preserve its remaining armor. That helped them accelerate their advances in Ukraine this spring. Russian regiments captured around 13 square km a day in May and June—double the rate in June.

But the Ukrainians may be able to slow the advance, or even reverse it, with cheap, simple tricks for crashing motorcycles. There’s already some evidence it’s working. After capturing more than 150 square km of Sumy Oblast this spring with an all-infantry force almost completely lacking heavy armored vehicles, the Russians are now pulling back in Sumy.

Russian hopes for a big northern penetration, perhaps all the way to Sumy city, appear to be fading. Attacking on foot or on bike along spiked roads against dug-in Ukrainian troops, the Russians may be preserving their last remaining tanks. 

But they’re also handing the Ukrainians a golden opportunity to stiffen the front line with spikes, wire and trenches—making a major Russian breakthrough even less likely than it was before most of Russia’s tanks went home. 

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