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132-563: The Mogilev offensive had two main goals within the context of Operation Bagration : The XXXIX Panzer Corps before Mogilev was one of the strongest corps in Army Group Centre , with four high-quality divisions. This reflected the strategic importance of the road through Mogilev, which provided the main route through the marshes in the region. However, as with the other German armies involved in Operation Bagration ,

264-674: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in

396-651: A lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and

528-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to

660-633: A Soviet offensive breaks out the Army will either have to go over to a mobile defence or see its front smashed". Because the initial offensive in Belarus was thought to be a feint, the Feste Plätze spanned the entire length of the Eastern Front. Army Group Centre had Feste Plätze at Vitebsk , Orsha , Mogilev , Baranovichi , Minsk , Babruysk , Slutsk , and Vilnius . Operation Bagration

792-558: A hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate

924-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but

1056-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between

1188-622: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it

1320-526: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in

1452-673: A significant disruptive effect. The partisans were also used to mop up encircled German forces once the breakthrough and exploitation phases of the operation were completed. The Stavka had committed approximately 1,670,300 combat and support personnel, approximately 32,718 artillery pieces and mortars, 5,818 tanks and assault guns and 7,799 aircraft. Army Group Centre's strength was 486,000 combat personnel (849,000 total, including support personnel). The army group had 3,236 field guns and other artillery pieces (not including mortars) but only 495 operational tanks and assault guns and 920 available aircraft, of which 602 were operational. Army Group Centre

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1584-539: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,

1716-481: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under

1848-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of

1980-610: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this

2112-488: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to

2244-624: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There

2376-573: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially

2508-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which

2640-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and

2772-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to

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2904-585: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in

3036-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using

3168-453: The 11th Guards Army , 5th Army and 31st Army then attacked the German positions, breaking through the first defensive belt on the same day. The German deployment of its only reserve division was met the next day with the insertion of the massed Soviet tank brigades, which achieved the operational breakthrough. By 25 June, Soviet forces began to advance into the German rear. Völckers' position

3300-470: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population

3432-411: The 31st , 12th , 337th and 110th Infantry Divisions), attempted to hold its lines in the face of a ferocious assault by Grishin's 49th Army during which the latter suffered heavy casualties. The Fourth Army commander, von Tippelskirch, requested that Martinek be allowed to withdraw to the 'Tiger' line late on 23 June; this was refused, although the reserve Panzergrenadier-Division Feldherrnhalle

3564-479: The 369th ), fought their way into the town during the night, while mobile units of the 23rd Guards Tank Brigade enveloped the garrison from the northwest. Mogilev , along with its town commander, Generalmajor von Erdmannsdorff , (later executed by the Soviets for war crimes ) and most of the 12th Infantry Division who had been instructed to defend the town to the last man, fell into Soviet hands on 28 June. During

3696-457: The 3rd Panzer Army under the command of Georg-Hans Reinhardt ; the lines ran through marshy terrain in the north, through a salient round the city of Vitebsk, to a sector north of the main Moscow –Minsk road, held by the 4th Army . It was opposed by the 1st Baltic Front of Hovhannes Bagramyan , and Ivan Chernyakhovsky 's 3rd Belorussian Front , which were given the task of breaking through

3828-945: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian

3960-657: The Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as

4092-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in

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4224-648: The Courland Pocket . On 22 June 1944, the Red Army attacked Army Group Centre in Byelorussia, with the objective of encircling and destroying its main component armies. By 28 June, the German 4th Army had been destroyed, along with most of the Third Panzer and Ninth Armies. The Red Army exploited the collapse of the German front line to encircle German formations in the vicinity of Minsk in

4356-554: The Lithuanian Security Police . The relatively static lines in Byelorussia had enabled the Germans to construct extensive field fortifications, with multiple trench lines to a depth of several kilometres and heavily mined defensive belts. Besides the pro-German and pro-Soviet forces, some third-party factions were also involved in the fighting during Operation Bagration, most notably several resistance groups of

4488-726: The Lublin – Brest and Lvov – Sandomierz areas to the central sectors, enabling the Soviets to undertake the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive and Lublin–Brest Offensive . This allowed the Red Army to reach the Vistula River and Warsaw , which in turn put Soviet forces within striking distance of Berlin , conforming to the concept of Soviet deep operations—striking into the enemy's strategic depths . Germany's Army Group Centre had previously proven difficult to counter, as

4620-623: The Lublin–Brest Offensive as well as engage in offensive operations in that area. The bulk of tactical resources, in particular anti-tank artillery , was allocated to the 1st Ukrainian Front , the spearhead of the Vistula, L'vov-Premyshl operation. Thirty-eight of the 54 anti-tank regiments allocated to the Byelorussian-Baltic-Ukrainian operations were given to the 1st Ukrainian Front. This demonstrates that

4752-593: The Minsk Offensive and destroy them, with Minsk liberated on 4 July. With the end of effective German resistance in Byelorussia, the Soviet offensive continued on to Lithuania , Poland and Romania over the course of July and August. The Red Army successfully used the strategies of Soviet deep battle and maskirovka (deception) to their full extent for the first time, albeit with continuing heavy losses. Operation Bagration diverted German mobile reserves from

4884-584: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On

5016-721: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to

5148-523: The VI Corps , pushing it so far to the south that it came under the command of the 4th Army. The LIII Corps had received permission to retreat on 24 June with three divisions, while leaving one division behind in the fester Platz Vitebsk . However, by the time the order arrived, the city was already encircled. General Friedrich Gollwitzer , the commander of the Vitebsk "strongpoint", decided to disobey

5280-560: The Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation forces. The battle has been described as the triumph of the Soviet theory of the " operational art " because of the complete coordination of all the strategic front movements and signals traffic to fool the enemy about the target of the offensive. The military tactical operations of the Red Army successfully avoided the mobile reserves of the Wehrmacht and continually "wrong-footed"

5412-411: The "deep battle", envisaged breaking through the tactical zones and forward German defences. Once these tactical offensives had been successful, fresh operational reserves were to exploit the breakthrough and the operational depths of the enemy front using powerful mechanized and armoured formations to encircle enemy concentrations on an Army Group scale. Army Group Centre's northern flank was defended by

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5544-486: The 1st Mechanised Corps swept hastily across the edge of the Pripyet Marshes , subduing the German 9th Army troops defending fester platz Slutsk, cutting through the fortress, effectively hindering the bulk of the 9th Army's ability to flee through the south and ultimately sealing the fate of the battle-hardened unit on the lands of Belorussia. It was the ability of KMG Pliev to seize Slutsk and swing south against

5676-519: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as

5808-561: The 4th Army's XXVII Corps holding Orsha and the main Moscow-Minsk highway. Despite a tenacious German defense, Orsha was liberated by 26 June, and the 3rd Belorussian Front's mechanized forces were able to penetrate far into the German rear, reaching the Berezina River by 28 June. The central sector of Soviet operations was against the long front of 4th Army, under the command of Kurt von Tippelskirch . Soviet plans envisaged

5940-504: The 9th Army that truly showed the effectiveness of the combination of the anachronistic horse-mounted Soviet cavalrymen and the fleet of mechanised beasts of the Soviet armoured formations in the form of the Cavalry-Mechanised Group in striking deep into the operational depth of the opponent as envisaged by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky 's Deep Battle doctrine. With the flanks secured by the Cavalry-Mechanised Group and

6072-471: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home

6204-616: The Berezina River on 28 June. The centre of the 4th Army was holding the tip of the Byelorussian bulge, with the bulk of its forces on a shallow bridgehead east of the Dnieper River . The Mogilev Offensive opened with an intense artillery barrage against the German defensive lines on the morning of 22 June. The goal of the 2nd Belorussian Front (Colonel-General Gyorgy Zakharov ) was to pin the 4th Army near Mogilev while

6336-649: The Dnieper crossings on the evening of 27 June and fought its way into the city during the night, while mobile units enveloped the garrison from the northwest. During the day both the German XII Corps and XXXIX Panzer Corps began falling back towards the Berezina crossings. Travel was nearly impossible by day, due to the omnipresence of the Soviet air force, while Soviet tank columns and roadblocks provided constant obstacles. The main body of 4th Army arrived at

6468-480: The Dnieper; this was countermanded by the Army Group commander, Busch, who instructed Tippelskirch to order the units to return to their positions. This was however impossible as a cohesive frontline no longer existed. With the front collapsing, Busch met with Hitler on 26 June and received the authorisation to pull the army back to the Berezina River, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Mogilev. The 49th Army forced

6600-686: The Fourth Army was successfully prevented from disengaging in time to escape encirclement in the Minsk offensive , which commenced immediately afterwards. Operation Bagration Zaloga: 300,000–375,000 overall Frieser: 399,102 Glantz and House: ~450,000 combat casualties Isayev: ~500,000 combat casualties Soviet sources: 539,480 total casualties Glantz and House: 770,888 (including ~550,000 combat casualties) Operation Bagration ( Russian : Операция Багратион , romanized :  Operatsiya Bagration )

6732-521: The Fourth Army was unprepared for a major offensive, as the Oberkommando des Heeres expected that the main Soviet offensive would be against Army Group North Ukraine . Shortly before the attack began, a battalion commander in the 12th Infantry Division raised concerns about a possible attack with General Martinek, who was on a tour of inspection. Martinek agreed but in response cited the proverb "Whom God would destroy, he first strikes blind" :

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6864-470: The German forces. Despite the massive forces involved, Soviet front commanders left their adversaries completely confused about the main axis of attack until it was too late. The Russian maskirovka is roughly equivalent to the English camouflage , but it has broader application in military use. During World War II the term was used by Soviet commanders to describe measures to create deception with

6996-592: The Germans to move their powerful armoured forces, fresh from their victory in the First Jassy–Kishinev Offensive in April–June 1944, to the central front to support Army Group Centre. This was the primary purpose of Bagration. In order to maximize the chances of success, the maskirovka was a double bluff. The Soviets left four tank armies in the L'vov-Peremyshl area and allowed the Germans to know it. The attack into Romania in April–June further convinced

7128-532: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,

7260-701: The Ilyushin-2 Shturmovik "Flying Tank" ground-attack aircraft strafed and bombed the German columns as the Red Air Force firmly controlled the skies of the Belorussian balcony. Following the colossal bombardment which was supposed to shatter the forward defences of the 9th Army, troops of the Soviet 3rd Army launched their assault from Rogachev, but were met with obstinate resistance from the Germans in that sector and sustained heavy casualties, while not many advancements were attained. Meanwhile,

7392-590: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this

7524-410: The L'vov operation. This totaled twelve tank and five mechanized corps. In contrast, Operation Bagration ' s Baltic and Byelorussian Fronts were allocated just eight tank and two mechanized corps. The 1st Byelorussian Front (an important part of the L'vov-Premyshl operation) is not mentioned on the Soviet battle order for the offensive. It contained a further six armies and was to protect the flank of

7656-405: The Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive allowed the Red Army to reach the outskirts of Warsaw after gaining control of Poland east of the Vistula river. The campaign enabled the next operation, the Vistula–Oder Offensive , to come within sight of the German capital. The Soviets were initially surprised at the success of the Byelorussian operation which had nearly reached Warsaw. The Soviet advance encouraged

7788-411: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of

7920-405: The Polish Home Army . The latter mostly fought both the German as well as the Soviet-led troops. Some Home Army partisan factions regarded the Soviet Union as the greater threat, however, and negotiated ceasefires or even ad-hoc alliances with the German occupation forces. Such deals were condemned by the Home Army's leadership, and several partisan officers who cooperated with the Germans against

8052-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated

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8184-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from

8316-435: The Soviet defeat in Operation Mars had shown. However, by June 1944, despite shortening its front line, it was exposed following the defeats of Army Group South in the Battle of Kursk , the Battle of Kiev , the Dnieper–Carpathian offensive and the Crimean offensive in the late summer, autumn, and winter of 1943–44. In the north, Army Group North was also pushed back, leaving Army Group Center's lines protruding towards

8448-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian

8580-434: The Soviet plans for the L'vov operation were a major consideration and whoever planned the offensive was determined to hold the recently captured territory. The target for this operation was the Vistula bridgehead and the enormous anti-tank artillery forces helped repulse big counter-attacks by German armoured formations in August–October 1944. One American author suggests that these Soviet innovations were enabled, in part, by

8712-407: The Soviet strategic fronts. Instead they suggested four options: an offensive into Romania and through the Carpathian Mountains , an offensive into the western Ukrainian SSR aimed at the Baltic coast , an attack into the Baltic, and an offensive in the Byelorussian SSR . The first two options were rejected as being too ambitious and open to flank attack. The third option was rejected on the grounds

8844-418: The Soviet-controlled Polish People's Army , murdered, imprisoned or deported. Two special representatives to Stavka were appointed to coordinate the operations of the Fronts involved: Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Georgy Zhukov . The 1st Belorussian Front was particularly large and included further units which were only committed during the follow-on Lublin-Brest Offensive . 2nd Army was not involved in

8976-444: The Soviets that the Axis forces in Romania needed removing and kept the Germans concerned about their defences there and in southern Poland, while drawing German forces to the L'vov sector. Once the offensive against Army Group Centre, which lacked mobile reserves and support, had been initiated, it would create a crisis in the central sector that would force the German armoured forces north to Byelorussia from Poland and Romania, despite

9108-622: The Soviets were subsequently court-martialed. However, many times Polish Home Army fought Soviet troops in self-defence. Most often, Polish Home Army supported approaching Soviet forces and attacked German troops according to a plan of Operation Tempest . The plan was to cooperate with the advancing Red Army on a tactical level, while Polish civil authorities came out from underground and took power in Allied-controlled Polish territory. The plan failed, as Soviet troops would attack Polish Home Army groups after cooperation against German troops. Many Polish Home Army soldiers were killed in action, enlisted to

9240-403: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of

9372-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter

9504-585: The bulk of it, the XXXIX Panzer Corps and XII Corps , being encircled while pinned down by attacks from the 2nd Belorussian Front in the parallel Mogilev Offensive Operation . By far the most important Soviet objective, however, was the main Moscow–Minsk road and the town of Orsha, which the southern wing of Chernyakhovsky's 3rd Belorussian Front was ordered to take. A breakthrough in this area, against General Paul Völckers ' XXVII Corps, would form

9636-523: The concerns were not passed on. The city of Mogilev had been designated a Fester Platz , or fortified area, under the command of Generalmajor Gottfried von Erdmannsdorff . As with the other offensives in the first phase of Operation Bagration , the Mogilev offensive opened with an intense artillery barrage against the German defensive lines on the morning of 23 June. East of Mogilev itself, General Robert Martinek 's XXXIX Panzer Corps (made up of

9768-572: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language

9900-525: The crossing on 30 June. It largely completed the crossing by 2 July, under heavy Soviet bombardment, but was retreating into a trap. The Mogilev Offensive fulfilled all its immediate objectives; not only was the city itself taken, but the 4th Army was successfully prevented from disengaging in time to escape encirclement in the Minsk Offensive , which commenced immediately afterwards. To capture Bobruysk , General Konstantin Rokossovsky proposed during

10032-465: The day both the German XII Corps and XXXIX Panzer Corps (whose commander, Martinek, was killed that evening in an air attack), began falling back towards the Berezina crossings. As the roads were clogged with fleeing civilians and military units, and were also under heavy air attack, progress was slow. The Mogilev offensive fulfilled all its immediate objectives; not only was the city itself taken, but

10164-608: The defences to the north and south of Vitebsk and cutting off the salient. In the north, the 1st Baltic Front pushed the German IX Corps over the Dvina, while encircling the LIII Corps in the city of Vitebsk by 24 June, opening a gash in the frontline of 40 kilometres (25 miles) wide. The Soviet command inserted its mobile forces to begin exploitation in operational depth. To the south, the 3rd Belorussian Front attacked

10296-439: The developing Vitebsk–Orsha and Bobruysk Offensives encircled it. East of Mogilev, General Robert Martinek 's XXXIX Panzer Corps attempted to hold its lines in the face of an assault by the 49th Army during which the latter suffered heavy casualties. The 4th Army commander, Tippelskirch, requested that the army be allowed to withdraw on 25 June. When the permission was not forthcoming, he authorised his units to withdraw to

10428-438: The east and at risk of losing contact with neighbouring army groups. The German High Command expected the next Soviet offensive to fall against Army Group North Ukraine (Field Marshal Walter Model ), and it lacked the necessary intelligence capabilities to discover the Soviets' true intentions. The Wehrmacht had redeployed one-third of Army Group Centre's artillery, half of its tank destroyers , and 88 per cent of tanks to

10560-406: The enemy situation: When it is still to be considered that the attack against Army Group Centre will be a secondary operation in the framework of the global Soviet offensive operations, it must be taken into account that the enemy will also be capable in front of Army Group Centre to build concentrations of which the force of penetration cannot be underestimated in view of the ratio of forces between

10692-420: The enemy was too well prepared. The only safe option was an offensive into Byelorussia which would enable subsequent offensives from Ukraine into Poland and Romania. The Soviet and German High Commands recognised western Ukraine as a staging area for an offensive into Poland. The Soviets, aware that the enemy would anticipate this, sought to deceive the Germans by creating a crisis in Byelorussia that would force

10824-426: The escape routes of the 9th Army severed, the Soviet 65th Army swung north and soon entered the fortress city of Bobruysk. Heavy hand-to-hand fighting and ferocious urban warfare ensued, but the 65th Army was able to ultimately overcome the German 9th Army, capturing the stronghold by the 29th of June. The 9th Army was destroyed on 28 June after heavy fighting against the 65th Army, while they were unable to escape due to

10956-480: The fact that they had been cut off by the prior Soviet manoeuvres. Due to the failures of the commander of Army Group Centre, Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch was forced to commit the 20th Panzer Division as a relief force to the 9th Army. Busch was sacked on the 28th by Adolf Hitler and replaced with the experienced master of defensive warfare, Walther Model . The success of the Bobruysk Offensive

11088-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,

11220-456: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or

11352-423: The first or second phases of the German defense, being positioned south of the main axis of Soviet operations. The Wehrmacht's forces were based on logistic lines of communications and centres, which on Hitler's orders were declared Feste Plätze (fortified towns to be held at all costs) by OKH. General Jordan of 9th Army was very worried at how vulnerable this immobility made the army, correctly predicting that "if

11484-502: The former Gulag prisoner along those of Zhukov and Ivan Konev . The second phase of the operation involved the entire operation's most significant single objective: the retaking of Minsk, capital of the Byelorussian SSR. It would also complete the large-scale encirclement and destruction, set up by the first phase, of much of Army Group Centre. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to

11616-692: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to

11748-525: The goal of inflicting surprise on the Wehrmacht forces. The OKH expected the Soviets to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1944. The Stavka (Soviet High Command) considered a number of options. The timetable of operations between June and August had been decided on by 28 April 1944. The Stavka rejected an offensive in either the L'vov sector or the Yassy-Kishinev sectors owing to the presence of powerful enemy mobile forces equal in strength to

11880-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and

12012-525: The group of forces in Parichi would be commanded by Konstantin Rokossovsky himself. A rivalry formed between the two most competent commanders of the Soviet Red Army as the two raced against each other towards Bobruysk. On 24 June 1944, 7000 guns, mortars and BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers of the 1st Belorussian Front unleashed their fury of projectiles upon the troops of the German 9th Army, while

12144-655: The main operation would be against Army Group North Ukraine. On 14 June, the Chief of Staff of Army Group Centre told General Kurt Zeitzler , the Chief of the Army General Staff, that "...the Russian concentration here [in front of 9th Army] and at the Autobahn clearly indicates that the enemy attack will be aimed at the wings of the Army Group". On 10 June the OKH adopted the opinion of Army Group Centre in its estimate of

12276-507: The northern pincer of the encirclement. The Minsk highway was protected by extensive defensive works manned by the 78th Assault Division , a specially reinforced unit with extra artillery and assault gun support. Orsha itself had been designated a Fester Platz (stronghold) under the 78th Division's commander. The Soviet assault on this sector opened on 22 June with a massive artillery barrage that destroyed defensive positions, flattened bunkers, and detonated ammunition stores. Infantry from

12408-524: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of

12540-564: The operation would be a success. According to Rokossovsky's plan, the 1st Belorussian Front would be divided into two sectors - the Soviet 3rd Army under the command of General Alexander Gorbatov striking from Rogachev and the sector comprising the Soviet 10th, 28th and 65th Armies as well as the Cavalry-Mechanised Group(KMG) under the command of Lieutenant General Issa Pliyev mounting its assault from Parichi. The Rogachev sector would be supervised by Zhukov, while

12672-405: The order and have all units of his corps break out at the same time. Abandoning its heavy equipment, the corps began a breakout attempt in the morning of 26 June but quickly ran into Soviet roadblocks outside the city. Vitebsk was taken by 29 June, with the entire LIII Corps of 28,000 men eliminated from the German order of battle. The 3rd Belorussian Front simultaneously opened operations against

12804-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to

12936-461: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,

13068-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held

13200-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or

13332-459: The places where the main Soviet attacks would take place, with the exception of 6th Guards Army near Vitebsk. The Soviet strategic reserves were not detected. The start of Operation Bagration involved many Soviet partisan formations in the Byelorussian SSR, which were instructed to resume their attacks on railways and communications . From 19 June large numbers of explosive charges were placed on rail tracks and though many were cleared, they had

13464-478: The planning of Operation Bagration a multi-pronged approach by seizing both Bobruysk and Slutsk and ultimately destroying the German 9th Army under Generalfeldmarschall Hans Jordan by attacking both fortress cities with equal priority and strength, with which the Soviet General Staff and Joseph Stalin himself had initially disagreed. However, Rokossovsky stubbornly insisted and promised Stalin that

13596-459: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian

13728-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in

13860-539: The presence of powerful Soviet concentrations threatening German-occupied Poland. The intent of the Soviets to strike their main blow towards the Vistula can be seen in the Red Army's (albeit fragmented) order of battle. The Soviet general staff studies of both the Byelorussian and L'vov-Sandomierz operations reveal that the L'vov- Przemyśl operation received the overwhelming number of tank and mechanized corps. Six guards tank corps and six tank corps along with three guards mechanized and two mechanized corps were committed to

13992-479: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration

14124-472: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,

14256-422: The provision of over 220,000 Dodge and Studebaker trucks by the United States to motorize the Soviet infantry. Most of the aviation units, fighter aircraft and assault aviation ( strike aircraft ) were given to the L'vov operation and the protection of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Of the 78 fighter and assault aviation divisions committed to Bagration, 32 were allocated to the L'vov operation and contained more than

14388-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed

14520-479: The sector under Konstantin Rokossovsky met much less retaliation, as the lines around Parichi were not heavily guarded by the German troops. In a magnificent demonstration of the Soviet Red Army's mastery over the deployment of mobile troops in accordance with the Deep Battle doctrine, the Cavalry-Mechanised Group(KMG) under the command of Lieutenant General Issa Pliev consisting of the 4th Guards Cavalry Corps and

14652-519: The south. The entire operational reserve on the Eastern front (18 Panzer and mechanised divisions, stripped from Army Groups North and Centre) was deployed to Model's sector, leaving Army Group Centre with a total of only 580 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns. German lines were thinly held; for example, the 9th Army sector had 143 soldiers per km of the front. A key factor in the subsequent collapse of Army Group Center during Operation Bagration

14784-424: The spring of 1944, aimed at the city of Kovel , Army Group Center was significantly weakened by being forced to transfer nine divisions and numerous independent armored formations from its main front to its far right flank, located deep in the rear at the junction with Army Group South. These forces would then be attached to Army Group North Ukraine, the successor to Army Group South. This meant that Army Group Center

14916-679: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In

15048-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to

15180-410: The two sides. On 19 June, Army Group Centre noted in its estimate of the enemy situation that the concentration of enemy air forces had become greater (4,500 out of 11,000) and that this left new doubts regarding OKH's estimate. OKH saw no grounds for this supposition. Shortly before the beginning of the Soviet offensive, the army commands had detected some enemy forces near the front and had identified

15312-786: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic  * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature

15444-511: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to

15576-434: The west. It was during this operation that Nazi Germany was forced to fight simultaneously on two major fronts for the first time since the war began. The Soviet Union destroyed 28 of 34 divisions of Army Group Centre and completely shattered the German front line. The overall engagement is the largest defeat in German military history, with around 450,000 German casualties, while 300,000 other German soldiers were cut off in

15708-761: The world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has

15840-475: Was committed to the Byelorussian operation. This concentration of aviation was to protect the Vistula bridgeheads against air attack and to assault German counteroffensives from the air. Towards the beginning of June 1944, the German High Command, Army Group Center and the army commands had identified a large part of the concentration against Army Group Centre, although they still considered that

15972-421: Was effectively deprived of well over 100,000 personnel and 552 tanks, assault guns and self-propelled guns at the start of Operation Bagration. Operation Bagration, in combination with the neighbouring Lvov–Sandomierz offensive , launched a few weeks later in Ukraine , allowed the Soviet Union to recapture Byelorussia and Ukraine within its 1941 borders, advance into German East Prussia , but more importantly,

16104-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian

16236-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of

16368-400: Was further threatened by the near-collapse of the 3rd Panzer Army's VI Corps, immediately to the north. By midnight on 25 June, the 11th Guards Army had shattered the remains of VI Corps, and 26 June saw the German forces in retreat. Soviet tank forces of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps were able to push up the road towards Minsk at speed, with a subsidiary force breaking off to encircle Orsha, which

16500-518: Was launched on a staggered schedule, with partisan attacks behind German lines beginning on 19–20 June. On the night of 21–22 June, the Red Army launched probing attacks on German frontline positions, combined with bombing raids on Wehrmacht's lines of communication. The main offensive began in the early morning of 22 June, with an artillery bombardment of unprecedented scale against the defensive works. The initial assault achieved breakthroughs almost everywhere. The first phase of Soviet deep operations,

16632-434: Was liberated on the evening of 26 June. The main exploitation force, Pavel Rotmistrov 's 5th Guards Tank Army , was then committed through the gap in the German lines. VI Corps finally crumbled completely; its commander, General Georg Pfeiffer , was killed on 28 June after losing contact with his divisions. Achieving complete success, the operation effectively ceased with the arrival of 5th Guards Tank Army's forward units at

16764-546: Was one that was so stupendous and respectable that Joseph Stalin began addressing Rokossovsky as Konstantin Konstantinovich as a sign of respect, a privilege that was only bestowed upon one other military officer, Boris Shaposhnikov . The vital victory at the crucial railway junction of Bobruysk had also earned Konstantin Rokossovsky the title of the Marshal of the Soviet Red Army, bringing the position and reputation of

16896-498: Was ordered forward to take up positions on the Dnieper river in preparation to cover a possible withdrawal by the frontline divisions. The southernmost German corps, General Vincenz Müller 's XIIth , (with the 18th Panzergrenadier Division , 57th and 267th Infantry Divisions), also began to pull back to the second defensive line. The 49th army forced the Dnieper crossings on the evening of 27 June; two divisions (the 290th and

17028-502: Was seriously short of mobile reserves: the demotorized 14th Infantry Division was the only substantial reserve formation, though the 20th Panzer Division , with 56 tanks, was positioned in the south near Bobruisk and the Panzergrenadier Division Feldherrnhalle , still in the process of forming, was also held in reserve. Furthermore, the Germans were supported by collaborationist troops such as

17160-549: Was the codename for the 1944 Soviet Byelorussian strategic offensive operation ( Russian : Белорусская наступательная операция «Багратион» , romanized :  Belorusskaya nastupatelnaya operatsiya "Bagration" ), a military campaign fought between 22 June and 19 August 1944 in Soviet Byelorussia in the Eastern Front of World War II , just over two weeks after the start of Operation Overlord in

17292-578: Was the Soviet Dnieper–Carpathian offensive in Ukraine. The success of this Soviet offensive had convinced the Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command, OKH) that the southern sector of the Eastern Front would be the staging area for the main Soviet summer offensive of 1944. As a result, German forces stationed in the south, panzer divisions in particular, received priority in reinforcements. Furthermore, during this Soviet offensive in

17424-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between

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