Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin (Russian: Николай Фёдорович Ватутин; 16 December 1901 – 15 April 1944) was a Soviet military commander during World War II who was responsible for many Red Army operations in the Ukrainian SSR as the commander of the Southwestern Front,[1] and of the Voronezh Front during the Battle of Kursk.

Vatutin was born in Chepukhino village in the Valuysky Uyezd, Voronezh Governorate (named Vatutino, Belgorod Oblast after him in 1968), into a peasant family of Russian ethnicity.

The following year, he became a member of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and served diligently in junior command positions.

Still, his peasant roots, relative youthful age and party zeal made him one of Stalin's few favorites in the Soviet military.

In that role, Vatutin did not try to claim success for himself in battles, but he made a point of identifying and promoting talented subordinates.

The Northwestern Front was defending Leningrad from the approaches by the German Army Group North, spearheaded by the armored corps led by Erich von Manstein.

He surprised Manstein, put him on the defensive, and forced the entire German Army Group North to regroup its troops to halt the Soviet offensive.

One striking exception to that pattern of deficiency was the brilliance of Ivan Chernyakhovsky, an obscure young colonel in command of the 28th Tank Division.

The German command drew self-congratulatory and misleading lessons from their narrow escape by concluding that they could overcome Soviet encirclements with supplies from the air while mounting a relief operation.

That thinking contributed to the Wehrmacht's disaster at the Battle of Stalingrad since the Soviet Air Force proved much more capable of disrupting the Luftwaffe's resupply efforts.

However, Vatutin finally convinced Stalin to promote Cherniakhovsky, who would rapidly rise to become one of the major Red Army field commanders.

On 22 October 1942, Vatutin received command of the newly-formed Southwestern Front and played an important role in planning the Soviet counter-offensive and the encirclement of the German 6th Army in the Battle of Stalingrad.

In December 1942, to secure the Soviet ring around Stalingrad, Vatutin's forces encircled and destroyed two thirds of the 130,000-strong Italian 8th Army in operation Little Saturn.

His actions enabled the Voronezh Front under General Filipp Golikov to capture Kharkov, but he had overextended his depleted troops and not paid sufficient attention to the changing strategic situation.

At Kursk, he rejected conventional echeloning of armies, and his innovative deployment allowed him to not only conduct a skillful defence against the technically superior Germans, but also gave him the opportunity to quickly switch from defense to offense.

During one of the interrogations, he said that the attack on Nikolai Vatutin had taken place in the area of Sotnia of Derkach and had been one by units of the Sluzhba Bezpeky (OUN Security Service) in the villages of Mikhalkivtsi and Siancy of Ostrovsky district of Rivne region.

After the Cold War, a decline in Germanocentric analyses of the Eastern Front has made Vatutin win recognition among Western military experts as one of World War II's most creative commanders:At Kursk, Vatutin was able to stop Manstein's powerful armoured spearheads well short of their objectives and then shift to a counteroffensive that shattered the German front.

Vatutin demonstrated great flexibility during the Korsun offensive, taking advantage of fleeting opportunities rather than reinforcing failure, which resulted in his armour encircling two German corps.

Vatutin would surely have played a major role in finishing off Manstein's command in the Kamenets-Podolsky offensive if Ukrainian partisans had not fatally wounded him after Korsun.

[17]In November 2014, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory included Vatutin on the list of 'persons involved in the struggle against Ukraine's independence, the organization of famines, and political repressions.

'[10] On 9 February 2023, a monument to Vatutin atop his grave in Kyiv's Mariinskyi Park was dismantled and relocated to the local Aviation Museum.