Kabitsin fought in the Russian Civil War on the Eastern Front. He commanded a machine-gun platoon. By Operation Barbarossa, Kabitsin was a political officer of a rifle battalion in Kirov. He became a battalion commissar in a battalion of the 135th Rifle Division when that division was formed in fall 1941. He fought in the Battles of Rzhev and was sent to the Frunze Military Academy for a course for rifle regiment commanders. In September 1943, he became deputy commander of a rifle regiment in the 47th Guards Rifle Division. Kabitsin fought in the Donbass Strategic Offensive (August 1943), the Battle of the Dnieper, Nikopol–Krivoi Rog Offensive, Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive, and Operation Bagration. During the fall of 1944, he fought in the defense of the Magnuszew bridgehead and the Vistula–Oder Offensive from January 1945. For his actions in the Battle of Berlin, Kabitsin was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.