While the plane was damaged beyond repair, Kutakhov was soon able to return to flying with his unit, tallying 131 sorties by the end of the war and rising to the position of deputy squadron commander.

By the time he was nominated for the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 17 February 1943 he had been promoted to the position of squadron commander and totaled 262 combat sorties.

Later that year he saw several very intense aerial combats; as a result he was shot down on 27 March, but he survived due to his parachute, and then on 21 June he allegedly shot down the Messerschmitt Bf 109 piloted by Heinrich Ehrler, forcing him to escape by parachute and be evacuated by a rescue plan, although the incident is not mentioned in German or Western sources.

In May 1944 Kutakhov was promoted to commander of the 20th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, after which he flew in combat much less due to his seniority, but nevertheless he gained one last aerial victory in December that year (a Bf 109).

By the end of the war he accumulated 327 sorties, participated in 63 dogfights, and was credited with at least 12 solo aerial victories,[a] seeing combat in the battles for Leningrad, Karelia, Murmansk, the Arctic, Svir-Petrozavodsk, and Petsamo-Kirkenes.

In that position, which he remained for the rest of his life, much of his time modernizing and re-equipping the Soviet Air Force with newer aircraft, and he strongly supported the creation of long-range radar systems.

In 1982 he visited Syria with his colleague Koldunov to assess the damage caused by the Israeli attack that took out many Soviet-made aircraft, Operation Mole Cricket 19, in addition to visiting Egypt on several occasions, including to evaluate the damage inflicted on Egyptian Aviation by the Israeli Air Force during the later phase of the War of Attrition.