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Updated: June 16, 2025
A lively local engagement developed on August 16, 1916, west of Lake Nobel in the Pripet Marshes, about sixty miles northeast of Kovel. The fighting lasted throughout August 17 and 18, 1916, and finally resulted in a repulse for the Russians, who lost some 300 men and a few machine guns.
As commander on the Warsaw front he made it evident that he could, with an army short of all material things, hold until the last moment an enemy equipped with everything, and then escape the enemy's clutches. At Vilna he showed his technique by again eluding the enemy. "General Kaledin, the commander of the army on the Kovel front, is relatively a new figure in important operations.
Dubno, southeast of Lutsk, a town of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, is located in the valley of Ikwa on its left bank, and protects the Brody-Zdolbitsa section of the Lemberg-Rovno-Vilna railroad, with its branches to Kovel, Brest-Litovsk, and to Kieff.
The object of this movement apparently was not only to secure the safety of Kovel, but also to threaten General Brussilov's army by an enveloping movement which, if it had succeeded, would not only have pushed the Russian center back beyond Lutsk and even possibly Dubno, but would also have exposed the entire Russian forces, fighting in Galicia and the Bukowina, to the danger of being cut off from the troops battling in Volhynia.
In this respect, however, the Russians had fared no better, and possibly even worse. At any rate, neither Kovel nor Lemberg, apparently the two chief objectives of the Russian operations, had been reached, so that in spite of the Russian gains the advantage seemed to rest with the Austro-Germans.
The resistance had stiffened, especially in front of Kovel, where the Central Powers seemed to have assembled their strongest forces and were not only successful in keeping the Russians from reaching Kovel but even regained some of the ground lost in Volhynia. Southwest of Sokal they stormed Russian lines and took several hundred prisoners. Russian counterattacks were nowhere successful.
On that day the Russians captured some trenches near Korytniza, forty miles south of Kovel. These were held against many violent Austro-German counterattacks, although the latter were kept up for a number of days. By October 18, 1916, a new battle had developed in the neighborhood of Kiselin, and fighting also was renewed more vigorously on the Stokhod.
"If we are able to take Kovel there is reason to believe that the whole eastern front will be obliged to fall back, as Kovel represents a railway center which has been extraordinarily useful for the intercommunications of the Germans and Austrians.
The same condition existed on the Sokal-Linievka line, where the Russian forces had been trying for the best part of a week to force a crossing of the Stokhod River, the only natural obstacle between them and Kovel.
To the west of Lutsk in the direction toward Kovel, now apparently the main objective of General Brussilov, the Austro-Hungarians had received strong German reenforcements under General von Linsingen and successfully denied to the Russians a crossing over the Stokhod and Styr Rivers. June 17, 1916, was a banner day in the calendar of the Russian troops.
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