The German Army Group B and the Russian Western Front Army faced each other across a defensive line stretching hundreds of kilometers. Both sides had deployed millions of troops along it. German Army Group B, together with the Polish and Belarusian forces, fielded as many as 2.2 million men. The newly reconstituted Russian Western Front Army had an even greater strength of three million.
It could be said that both the German military and the Russian military had massed heavy forces along this line. The Germans wanted to defeat the Russian troops opposite them and ride the momentum straight into Moscow, the capital of Buru. To defend Moscow, Buru had to hold back the German assault at all costs. Otherwise, the fall of the capital would be inevitable.
In the freezing winter, amid ice and snow, it was not easy to launch a large-scale offensive. The reconnaissance units of both sides clashed every day, and quite a few men were picked off by snipers. German special forces and snipers, in particular, regarded such a battlefield as a paradise where they could reap glory.
Because the German military attached such importance to special forces, every one of its army corps had its own special unit. They were elites selected from reconnaissance troops, skilled at using all manner of techniques to disguise themselves and shoot down valuable enemy targets.
For this very reason, many Russian mid- and junior-ranking officers had been killed, leaving the rest afraid to show themselves lightly. This had also dealt a tremendous blow to Russian morale.
Velikiye Luki, a city in western Buru. The 19th, 20th, 33rd, 39th, 40th, and 50th Army Corps under the Russian Western Front Army were secretly assembling there. Several other army corps were secretly crossing the Danube River thirty kilometers south of Velikiye