After the Battle of Kursk, Stalin and the Stavka set their sights on recapturing Smolensk, and farther south, the wealth of the Donbas and eastern Ukraine.
Map 1: The Chernihiv-Poltava Offensive
Map 2: The Red Army perspective
I guess you have to be a Red Army officer to understand this one.
Photos:
Ivan Konev, Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1945
General Nikolai Vatutin, Commander of the Voronezh Front, 1943
Konstantin Rokossovsky, Marshal of the USSR.
