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Updated: June 17, 2025
In Galicia Ivanov was pushed back to the Strypa and then the Sereth, and on the upper reaches of those rivers Brody was captured and two of the Volhynian fortresses, Dubno and Lutsk. Rovno itself was threatened, and with it the southern stretch of that lateral railway from Riga to Lemberg on which the Germans had set their hearts.
Lutsk is a minor fortress, the most westerly of the Volhynian triangle formed by Rovno, Dubno, and Lutsk. The town is the center of an important grain trade, and the districts of which it is the center contained before the war a considerable German colony. It is supposed to have been founded in the seventh century. In 1791 it was taken by Russia.
But the central armies, retiring upon Vilna, were nearly trapped and once were actually cut off by German cavalry. By September the great campaign approached its end. The Russians at last took root on a line from Riga, through the Pripet Marshes to Rovno and thence to the Rumanian boundary.
Rovno, the largest of the three cities, with about twenty thousand inhabitants, was first fortified in 1887, and as a railroad junction is even more important than either Lutsk or Dubno. Its fortifications are built to serve as a fortified bridgehead. They amount to seven forts of which five are located on the left bank of the Ustje and two on the right.
At other points, too, the Austrian resistance stiffened perceptibly, especially in the region of Torgovitsa, and on the Styr below Lutsk. Dubno, a modern fortress, built, like Lutsk, mainly in support of Rovno, to ward off possible aggression, now supplied an excellent starting point for a Russian drive into the heart of Galicia.
The fortresses of Lutsk and Dubno date with their beginning as far back as 1878, at which time they were built according to the plans of the Russian General Todleben. A little later the fortifications of Rovno were added to this group, and one of the strongest triangles of Russia's fortifications was formed thereby.
It is this railway sector, between Rovno and Kovel, that has been the objective of the Russian attacks ever since the Teuton offensive came to a standstill eight months ago, for its control would give the Russians a free hand to operate southward against the lines in Galicia. The gunner is ready and the officer is just giving the command to fire.
Still farther north the attack progressed in the direction of the strongly fortified town of Lutsk, on the Styr River, less than fifty miles west of the fortress of Rovno, in the Russian province of Volhynia.
Twenty miles farther north, in the vicinity of Olyka, the little town about halfway between the fortress of Lutsk and Rovno, on the railway line connecting these two points, the Russian forces reported slight progress on May 2, 1916. Northwest of Kremenets, in the Ikva section, Austro-Hungarian engineers succeeded in exploding mines in front of the Russian trenches.
At that time this front extended as follows: Starting at Tchartorysk on the Styr, a few miles south of the Kovel-Gomel railroad, it ran almost straight south through Tsuman, crossed the Brest-Litovsk railroad a mile or two north of Olyka, passed about fifteen miles west of Rovno to the Rovno-Lemberg railroad, which it crossed a few miles east of Dubno, then followed more or less the course of the Ikwa and passed through Novo Alexinez.
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