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Recent developments in the Russia-Ukraine War have seen Kursk make headlines,

provoking parallels with the Second World War battle that took place in the region.

But are such links helpful?

And how important was the 1943 clash to the wider war.

I'm Matt Elton, and I caught up with historian and author Peter Cadig Adams to find out more.

Pisa, thank you so much for being with us today.

We are here to talk about Kursk and a battle that took place in the Second World War,

but it's also a name which people might have heard in recent weeks with the situation with the Ukraine-Russia war.

We'll get on to that in a minute. Before we do, let's talk about the Second World War battle. How significant in one or two lines is this moment

in the Second World War? The Battle of Kursk is probably one of the turning points on the

Eastern Front and therefore of the turning points on the Eastern Front and therefore the whole European

War. Stalingrad is probably one, maybe Hitler's decision to invade Russia

in the first place is another, but Kursk was the last time the Germans built up

an operational reserve and then squandered it in a big battle on the eastern front and afterwards they were never as powerful and always on the background in the run-up to this battle that listeners need to know to make sense of

what happened I suppose both militarily but also geographically. The one thing to

say is that the Eastern Front Russia and what is now Ukraine and Belarus is absolutely vast.

...