The UK’s Sun reported Friday that Ukrainian troops who participated in the attack on the Russian province of Kursk had trained in the United Kingdom, adding to the growing evidence of NATO’s leading role in preparing and coordinating the attack.

“A month before they were dispatched to Kursk, some of the unit were sent to England where they underwent a few days of training alongside British soldiers,” the Sun reported. A major focus of the training was raids on high-rise buildings.

The UK, US, France and Germany have trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops on their own territory, teaching them how to operate the advanced weapons systems that have been provided to Ukraine and are now flowing into Russian territory.

The list of NATO-provided military hardware confirmed to be deployed in the Kursk offensive is growing. On Thursday, Sky News reported that Challenger 2 main battle tanks from the UK were being deployed as part of the offensive.

This follows confirmation from Voice of America that HIMARS long-range missiles had been used in the offensive.

Vladislav Seleznyov, a former spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff, told Voice of America that HIMARS were “critical to the stunning advance.

“The real scourge of the Russian army is the HIMARS, which turns into ashes a huge amount of weapons, equipment and personnel of the Russian army,” Seleznyov said.

Nikolay Patrushev, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Izvestia that the attack on Kursk was “planned with the involvement of NATO and Western special services.”

He added, “NATO countries have supplied Kiev with weapons, military instructors, and continuous intelligence while controlling the actions of neo-Nazis.”

The US media, citing unnamed American officials, have claimed that the US and NATO were not informed of the attack beforehand. However, this claim is entirely unbelievable, given the high-level coordination required to wage such a large-scale offensive using sophisticated NATO hardware.

The Guardian reported on Friday that “Western armor was at the heart of the assault, with no apparent restrictions on their use, including US Stryker and German Marder armored vehicles ... and even reportedly some of Britain’s donated squadron of 13 remaining Challenger 2 tanks.”

The Guardian also reported that “between Thursday night and Friday morning last week, Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian convoy on a highway 25 miles inside the border, in a strike whose accuracy and absence of artillery craters suggested it involved Himars rocket artillery. Dozens were probably killed.”

Nick Patton Walsh, the chief international correspondent of CNN, appeared to have walked into Russia without obtaining permission during a broadcast this week alongside Ukrainian military forces.

“This is where Russia begins,” Walsh said as he walked over the border:

It’s startling to see the steady flow of military vehicles, including what appears to be an ambulance and armor, passing through the Russian border point. That is the border post that was heavily hit when Ukraine moved in over a week ago. Russia’s borders here are completely undefended. It’s also remarkable the freedom with which the Ukrainian military are moving around here. They simply aren’t afraid of the drones that have hampered their every move for the past months.

He added, “Now this is what’s so startling about this offensive, the volume of Western-supplied armor that we’re seeing passing back and forth, their passage through here, up into Russia, unimpeded.”

On Thursday, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said that Ukrainian forces had advanced up to 22 miles during the offensive so far.

In a statement published on X on Thursday, the UK’s Ministry of Defense claimed that “since August 6, 2024, Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russia’s Kursk region to a depth ranging between 10-25km over a frontage of approximately 40 km.”

It added, “After initial disarray and disorganization, Russian forces have deployed in greater force to the region, including likely from elsewhere along the contact line. They have also begun to construct additional defensive positions in an effort to prevent Ukrainian advances.”

In its assessment of the offensive, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported that “Ukrainian forces continued to marginally advance southeast of Sudzha on August 16 amid continued Ukrainian operations in Kursk Oblast.”

The ISW also reported that Ukrainian strikes destroyed two significant bridges in Kursk Oblast using HIMARS strikes, which “will complicate Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the area.”

As a growing range of advanced weapons continues to flow into Russian territory, the pretense that NATO is not a participant in the war and that the conflict is a “defensive” war by Ukraine is falling away. The goal of the NATO powers to use the war to overthrow the Russian government and force the dissolution of Russia is being more and more openly stated.

Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, gloated about Ukraine’s offensive. “I think psychologically, this blow is tremendous to Putin, especially among elites, because he’s supposed to be the protector,” McFaul told MSNBC.

“And now for a second time in as many years, he has failed to do so,” McFaul said, referencing last year’s uprising by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group.