ROME, September 13. /TASS/. Russia has the upper hand in all directions of its special military operation in Ukraine, while also sucessfully repelling the Ukrainian incursion into its borderline region of Kursk, the La Repubblica newspaper’s military columnist Gianluca De Feo wrote.

"Reports are fragmented, so it is yet unclear whether those are separate missions or the start of a major offensive aimed at driving Ukrainians out of the Russian territory. <…> Russian troops are steadily advancing along the entire frontline in Donbass, isolating pockets of resistance," he said.

De Feo wrote that Russia has superiority in numbers, while many Ukrainian recruits did not even have the time to complete their basic training course before being sent into battle. The columnist also noted that the shortage of weapons has been so acute that Ukrainians "had to use US-made M101 cannons that date back to 1945."

The Ukrainian military launched a massive attack on Russia’s borderline Kursk Region on August 6. The Russian Defense Ministry reported on September 11 that over the period of combat operations in the Kursk area, the enemy has lost over 12,200 personnel, 96 tanks, 42 infantry fighting vehicles, 77 armored personnel carriers, 656 armored combat vehicles, 401 motor vehicles, 90 artillery guns, 26 multiple launch rocket systems, including seven HIMARS rocket launchers and five M270 MLRS, eight surface-to-air missile systems, two transporter-loader vehicles, 22 electronic warfare stations and seven counter-battery radar stations, two air-defense radar systems, eight engineering vehicles, among them two obstacle-clearing vehicles and one UR-77 mine-clearing vehicle.