The Soviet plan must have been to force a decisive victory on the southern half of the front (the are south from the marshes in the gullet), and continue with an invasion toward South Eastern Europe. The losses of 1941-42 in manpower makes it impossible for her to continue with a long winded war, so they had to act quick. They also would want to deny the German access to Romanian oil and Hungarian bauxite. The yet untouched South Eastern Europe could have served as full pantry where they could get the chow for the troops from, and alleviate their food shortage. That direction also offered them a way to fuck with the Anglos and lessen their influence on the Balkans and at the Dardanelles.

In the area of Orel-Kursk-Belgorod they planned a trap where they wanted to blow a decisive strike onto Germany, and defeat them once and for all. The Germans foiled their plan and instead they bled a Red Army and forced them into an offensive to gain that piece of land during three months, which they lost in three weeks back in 1941.
Szálasi raises criticism toward the Soviet leadership. He believes it was a mistake to try and force a defeat onto the Germans without the Anglo-Saxons. He counts this behaviour as the result of an inner crisis of the Soviet Union, and he suppose that they must not follow along a well formulated Strategic Plan, they only reacting to German actions, and are forced by the circumstances. Like how the goal of the summer campaign must have been the Ukrainian grain, to satisfy immediate needs. He sees the Allied powers out of sync - otherwise they would have execute a decisive maneuver together, striking simultaneously on the East and West. He calls each warfare as Anglo "pedlar strategy", and Soviet "butcher strategy".