Commanding the Russian I Corps on the left flank of Second Army, Lt. Gen. V.1. Artamonov had orders to hold out to the last man. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Artamonov might have made "an excellent private soldier provided he had a strict NCO over him," but was incapable of commanding a large formation in combat. Artamonov told army headquarters he expected to be attacked by two or three divisions striking form the northwest. "I hope Artamonov is entrenched," British observer A.W.F. Knox noted in his diary. Instead, Artamonov decided that the best defense was a good offense, ordering his troops forward to attack the only enemy his scouts had located, a division approaching from the west.

Artamonov's "enemy division" turned Out to be a single brigade of Landwehr, also stumbling forward blindly. The Germans got the worst of the encounter by far: artillery from the German I Corps shelled the Landwehr's forward positions while a Russian cavalry division - moving northward on its own initiative, for it never occurred to Artamonov to summon them - struck them in the flank. The shattered brigade came to a halt, saved from destruction by Artamonov's decision to pull his entire corps back.