After the Battle of Kursk, Stalin and the Stavka set their sights on recapturing Smolensk, and farther south, the wealth of the Donbas and eastern Ukraine. Map 1: The Chernihiv-Poltava Offensive Map 2: The Red Army perspective I guess you have to be a Red Army officer to understand this one.   Photos: Ivan Konev, Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1945   General Nikolai Vatutin, Commander of the Voronezh Front, 1943      Konstantin Rokossovsky, Marshal of the USSR.