Russia is addressing its soldier shortage. It has also sent interstellar infantry to the Kursk region.

Due to insufficient ground forces, Russia has withdrawn space force soldiers from various locations across the country, including early warning radar stations or strategic bomber bases before a nuclear attack. It has formed a temporary motorized infantry regiment from them and deployed it to the Kursk region to defend against Ukrainian attacks.

The so-called star infantry has already suffered its first losses in battles with the Ukrainians, writes the investigative portal Važnje istešje. It refers to anonymous sources and data from open sources.

Reassign valuable experts

The Air and Space Forces, known by their Russian acronym VKS, were established by a decision of President Vladimir Putin in 2015, merging the military aviation and air and missile defense forces.

Although these units were supposed to deal with air and space combat, at the turn of May and June this year, a motorized infantry regiment was formed within them to participate in the protection of the borders within the Sever Group. The regiment, which had no permanent garrison, arrived at the border in mid-July, just a few weeks before the Ukrainian army launched the attack.

The regiment included soldiers from the guard company guarding military airfields, soldiers from rear units, mechanics, and a small number of officers who were transferred to the infantry units from the Ukladinka airfield in the Altai region, the Belaya airfield in the Irkutsk region, and the Engels airfield in the Saratov region.

The Važnyje jistotii portal writes that Tu-22M or Tu-95 bombers operate from these bases, launching missiles and rockets from these bases, a cosmodrome or the Voronezh early warning radar when attacking Ukrainian cities.

It is not clear when and how these valuable specialists will be replaced. The portal noted that operating just one Voronezh radar requires more than 100 trained technicians.

First loss of the Star Troopers

The space infantry has suffered losses. The pro-war blog “Operation Z” wrote that on August 7, hastily transferred and poorly equipped “astronauts” repelled the attack of the Ukrainian army on the town of Korenevo region. During the fighting in this area, 22-year-old Ilya Romanov disappeared, transferred from the space force arsenal in the Tambov region, where rockets and satellites are stored.

VKS motorized riflemen were probably also among the columns destroyed by Ukrainian HIMARS rocket launchers near Ryersk. On the same day, Sergeant Vyacheslav Bondarenko, 22, who served at a bomber base in the Amur region and was later transferred, was wounded, Važnyje istoria wrote.

On August 6, Ukraine, which is resisting Russian aggression for the third year, launched a surprise attack on the Kursk region in western Russia. Since then, Ukrainian troops have occupied about 1,150 square kilometers of Russian territory and 82 Russian cities, including towns in the Sudja region, according to Ukrainian army commander Oleksandr Syryskyi.

Analysts believe that one of the goals of the Ukrainian operation is to force the Russian command to withdraw its troops from other areas of the front line in order to defend Russian territory. However, Moscow’s efforts to conquer the entire Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine have not yet weakened, as evidenced by the Russian army’s attacks near Pokrovsk and Toretsk.