Battle of Kursk of the offensive. July and August 1943 saw the heaviest German ammunition expenditure on the Eastern Front up to that point, with 236,915 tons consumed in July and 254,648 in August. The previous peak had been 160,645 tons in September 1942. The Red Army used two Fronts for the defence of Kursk, and created a third front behind the battle area which was held as a reserve. The Central and Voronezh Fronts fielded 12 armies, with 711,575 men (510,983 combat soldiers) and 625,591 men (446,236 combat soldiers) respectively. In reserve, the Steppe Front had an additional 573,195 men (449,133). Thus
Kursk submarine disaster Their response was compared to the Soviet style of cover up and stonewalling like that during the Chernobyl disaster. Minister of Defence Sergeyev said in interviews on 21 March 2000, that he had never refused any foreign help. "The Guardian" wrote in a 2002 review of two books, "Kursk, Russia's Lost Pride" and "A Time to Die: The Kursk Disaster": While most experts agreed that a torpedo had exploded, they differed on what caused the explosion. Many Russians did not believe that "Kursk" could be so easily sunk. The tragedy spawned a number of wild conspiracy theories to explain the