On 7 January, the Austrians captured Galich, and the door to further into Russia was opened; Every shot on the Polish soil is ringing the bell for Russia's end.

The Russian army is also under siege at the moment, and their support will not arrive until half a month later. If the German-Austrian forces took the opportunity to attack quickly, they would simply not be able to resist.

But anyway, they still have some troops that are constantly threatening the Austrians.

Just like the Russian Fourth Army, although they are surrounded, they still have offensive capabilities.

But the Austrians on the other side would not give it such a chance.

The Austrian army quickly ate the Russian Third Army, which was not far from it, and then reversed the spearhead, cutting off supplies while constantly cutting off the connection between the Russian army.

Soon, the Russian Fourth Army had only 70,000 men left, and its strength was greatly damaged; And the Austrian army still has more than 200,000 people, just like no one.

These encircled Russian forces basically lost their threat, and Kuster also stopped encircling and suppressing them, and began to concentrate his forces to prepare to overwhelm Russia.

On 8 January, when Kaiser Wilhelm II learned of Kuster's victory, he immediately asked his ministers to prepare a medal and an Iron Cross for Kuster, and then he himself held the battle report, slapping the table and laughing like a nervous patient.

Field Marshal Hindenburg advised him to concentrate his forces on the Eastern Front and work with the Allies to drive Russia out of the war; Even Falkingham, the current chief of the German General Staff, believed that an attack on Russia would bring greater benefits.

So the Germans quietly transferred part of their forces on the Western Front to the Eastern Front, preparing to deal a fatal blow to Russia.

They had planned to deploy in the vicinity of East Prussia in order to attack the Russian capital of St. Petersburg directly.

However, at Kuster's insistence, they eventually chose to occupy Poland first.

Together with the Austrians, they drove the Russians away without much effort.

By 10 January, all of Poland was under the control of the Central Powers, which was extremely detrimental to the Entente as Russia was facing the possibility of withdrawing from the war.

Romania saw that Russia was beaten like this, so it secretly concentrated its forces on the border of Ukraine.

Italy also began to favor Germany, hoping to join the Central Powers for greater benefits.

Bulgaria even directly declared war on Serbia and opened up the Serbian front.

God seems to favor the Central Powers and make them invincible wherever they are. But this is not what countries such as Britain and France want to see.

Britain began to build up troops on the Balkan front to allow Serbia to hold out longer.

But that didn't help. With superior forces, the Bulgarians quickly broke through the defenses and captured Zajechar and Niš.

In order to relieve the pressure on Russia, the French army took the rare initiative to attack, but was quickly repulsed by the strong German defensive lines.

Seeing that the land support could not effectively help Russia, Britain and France became more and more tense about the war.

At this time, the British Admiralty Churchill (later the British Prime Minister) made a suggestion: to open the Black Sea shipping lanes so that Russia could continue to transfuse blood.

This was not an easy task, and although the Allies firmly controlled the sea control of the war, it would be difficult to sink the entire Turkish fleet and control the Turkish Straits from the sky.

But at the moment there was nothing to be done on land, and the British top brass had to agree to this bold plan.

On 11 January, three days before Kuster's return to Vienna, a fleet of men from all over the world spoke different languages in the Mediterranean.

The Allies advanced by leaps and bounds in Russia, and soon moved the front to the Latvia-Western Ukraine area.

Petersburg was so close that the Germans only needed a few more steps to completely destroy the glory of Russia.

But there were divisions within the Allies:

Germany wanted to attack Russia without stopping. But the Austro-Hungarian leadership, which only wanted to control Western Ukraine, halted the Kuster movement and began to move part of its forces to the Balkan front.

When Kaiser Wilhelm learned of this, he scolded and felt sorry for Kuster, a very capable general.

Now that Kuster has only 400,000 troops, it is difficult to make any major moves. If you want to attack Russia, you can only rely on Germany itself.

But Russian reinforcements have already arrived, and they have about 900,000 people, plus the original Russian army, a total of 1.8 million people.

And the combined German-Austrian forces were only 1.2 million men, so it was impossible to attack.

The Germans attempted to occupy Estonia, but were not met with a counterattack from the Russians, and built a defensive line there to defend against the attack.

Offense and defense have been reversed, and the initiative has been handed over to each other; Next, it depends on how the Russian army fights.

There was no tense confrontation on the Eastern Front, and in the Balkans, the Allies fought smoothly.

Serbia was hit in the back and wanted to return in time, but most of the troops were pinned down by Austria-Hungary and could not move at all.

Bulgaria also took the opportunity to speed up its offensive and soon occupied all of Serbia's eastern regions.

Serbia is not to blame for such a situation, after all, who would have thought that Russia would be defeated so badly, let alone that Bulgaria would enter the war so quickly.

Faced with such a dire situation, the Serbian army top brass ordered a retreat to Belgrade in an attempt to make a last stand.

On 13 January, Kuster officially stepped down as commander-in-chief of operations on the Eastern Front, but retained command of the 19th Army.

As compensation, the Austro-Hungarian hierarchy granted him admission to the Imperial Privy Council, and the Emperor himself awarded him the Order of the Iron Crown of the First Degree.

At the same time, the Imperial Parliament appointed him the "Minister of Imperial Armaments", with the highest rights to develop and produce armaments, as well as certain logistical advice.

Although he was given a greater position and fame, Kuster remained depressed. He was still staring at the military map in his hand, carefully observing the battle.

On the Eastern Front, there is still no large-scale exchange of fire.

On the one hand, the German-Austrian forces were building a defensive line; And the Russian army lacks food and clothing.

On the other hand, Germany and Austria were busy restoring the fault lines on the military alliance; Russia, for its part, was in a hurry to regroup its forces.

Both sides were busy with their own business and simply did not have the energy to launch an offensive.

But the longer it dragged on, the better it was for the German-Austrian army: they could dig deeper trenches and build more fortifications.

The Eastern Front is a rare tranquillity, but the Balkans are lively.

Serbia's well-built defensive line was wiped out in just four days with the enemy on its back.

Even more lethal, Austria-Hungary was tied to Bulgaria on land, which meant that they had already been punched through.

More Serbs were divided and surrounded, the main force was lost, and there was no need to continue the battle. But because of the strong opposition of Britain and France, they still tried to hold on.

Serbia abandoned Belgrade in an attempt to survive in the south.

However, the delay in the arrival of Allied support made the Serbian army more and more desperate.

Eventually, Serbia established a government-in-exile and fled the country, leaving only the army to fight guerrilla warfare in the mountains.

The Balkan front received a brief period of peace. And this was exchanged for the infinite glory of the Allies and the darkest hour of the Entente.