[4] By May 1943 the forces of 6th Guards Army, subordinated to Voronezh Front, were in well-entrenched positions in the southern sector of the Kursk Salient south of Oboyan.

[9]The main weight of Fourth Panzer Army's eastern corps fell on 52nd Guards Rifle Division.

This division was driven back 10 kilometres on the first day, but German commanders were nonetheless disappointed at the rate of progress of their assault forces.

Voronezh Front command had, on the afternoon of 5 July, begun to move armoured forces forward to support 6 Guards Army.

The offensive by Fourth Panzer Army continued through 8 July and by 9 July the panzers had advanced close to Chistiakov's headquarters forcing him to withdraw further north, leaving Penkovskii at Kochetovka with a forward battle headquarters attempting to maintain contact with the Army's divisions.

[10] By that evening Chistiakov had managed to establish a new defensive line for his Army, but German forces had by then advanced to within 20 kilometres of Oboyan.

Soviet High Command and Voronezh Front Headquarters were aware of this diversion of German effort and, in addition to deploying further armoured reserves to the Prokhorovka area, began a series of counter-attacks against Fourth Panzer Army's penetration towards Oboyan.

By the third week of July, after the failure of the German strategic effort against the Kursk salient had become apparent, and in response to Soviet offensives towards Orel and in the southern Ukraine, German forces south of Oboyan began to pull back to the positions they had occupied at the beginning of the month in order to release forces for deployment elsewhere.

Chistiakov's forces, still based on 22nd and 23rd Rifle Corps and with seven rifle divisions, was not involved in the initial attack, which commenced on 28 October, and which four days later broke through the German lines, but they were committed to exploit this breakthrough as part of the southern wing of 2nd Baltic Front in order to turn the flank of Sixteenth Army.

In fighting that went on into the middle of December, German forces successfully constrained any widening of the breakthrough corridor by the two Baltic Fronts, but they were unable to close the gap between their two armies further west.

By the end of the year German forces had been able to close the gap in their lines and had stabilised the frontline around what had become the Nevel Bulge.

The major Soviet summer offensive of 1944 (Operation Bagration) was to be conducted on the central axis in order to achieve the liberation of Belorussia (Belarus).

The opening offensive by 1st Baltic Front on 22 June was concentrated against a 20 kilometre sector of the frontline held by the German Third Panzer Army.

Towards the end of July, 6th Guards Army was committed to an advance on Riga from the southeast as part of a general offensive by 1st Baltic Front, which by the end of the month had reached the Gulf of Riga thereby isolating the bulk of Army Group North in Estonia and northern Latvia.

On 24 September Soviet High Command decided to switch the direction of its offensive further south to strike west from the Shiauliai area to the Baltic coast at Memel (Klaipeda).

By 8 October the coastline south of Memel had been reached by 43rd Army and German forces in the Baltic States had been permanently isolated from overland contact with Germany.