Very surprisingly, and to his extreme frustration, Rybalko spent the first year of the war as a lecturer in Kazan. He finally got an operational assignment in May 1942 as deputy commander of the 3rd Tank Army of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command. All through the war, Rybalko's name was closely associated with the 3rd Tank Army. In the winter of 1942–1943, included in the Voronezh Front, his Tank Army spearheaded the different operations that tried to exploit and transform the Germans' defeat in Stalingrad in a large-scale strategic victory in the southern theater of operations. This included Operation Star in February, aimed at the liberation of Kharkov – one of the first major Soviet cities to be reconquered by the Red Army. But Manstein's counter-offensive recaptured the city and inflicted serious damages to an exhausted and over-extended 3rd Tank Army.