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.