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Updated: June 11, 2025
Brussilov's outflanking movement was continued with success, but the coup de grâce was given here, as at Charleroi and the Marne, by isolating a central group and thus breaking the line. Thrusting forward his right, Ruszky outflanked Lemberg and interposed between Von Auffenberg and the Austrian army in Poland.
The chief obstacle was Bothmer in the centre, on whose stubborn resistance the Germans prided themselves although most of his troops were Austrian; and he occupied most of the Russian attention for the rest of the campaign. But the most striking advance was made in the north of Brussilov's command, where summer had dried the low-lying ground south of the Pripet marshes.
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.
Between Biecz and Bednarka, the line of defense followed the heights of the Kobylanka, Tatarovka, Lysa Gora, and of the Rekaw; hence to the east, as the last defense of the Jaslo-Zmigrod road, lay the intrenched positions on the Ostra Gora, well within Brussilov's sector.
The Dniester and the Pruth were now flooded with July rains, and a month elapsed before Lechitsky could resume his march. Other causes had checked the Russians farther north. Brussilov's offensive may have been merely a vast reconnaissance in force, but its astonishing success had stirred the Germans to prompt action.
Both the Germans and Austrians had depleted their Eastern forces to provide against dangers elsewhere, and there were still sound elements like the Cossacks in the Russian Army. It was skimmed for the purpose of all the cream of its regiments, and the scene of action was laid where Brussilov's advance had pressed farthest forward in 1916.
The artillery preparation began on 29 June, and on 1 July the troops advanced from their trenches. For a time they carried all before them, and revolutionary Russia bade fair to repeat the success of Brussilov's offensive in 1916. Tcheremisov's Seventh Army took Koniuchy on the 1st and Potutory on the 2nd, and captured 18,000 prisoners.
Powerful counterattacks were launched at many points. One of these, according to the Russian official statement, was of special vigor. It was directed against General Brussilov's armies which were attempting to advance toward Lemberg, in the region of the village of Rogovitz to the southwest of Lokatchi, about four miles to the south of the main road from Lutsk to Vladimir-Volynski.
In Volhynia the German counterattacks against General Brussilov's army extended now along the front of almost eighty miles, stretching from Kolki on the Styr River to within a few miles of the Galician border near Gorochoff.
To conduct a successful retreat in the face of disaster is a no less difficult military achievement than the gaining of a decisive victory, and Brussilov's retreat from the passes deserves to rank as a masterly example of skillful tactics.
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