If you are Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or Ukrainian General Oleksandr Syrskyi, you are probably looking at the current map of Kursk with a smile on your face. In the space of three weeks, the Ukrainian army has made impressive tactical gains: about 1,200 square kilometers of Russian territory and a hundred small villages are under Ukrainian control, and hundreds of Russian soldiers have been captured.
The big question is whether the dynamics of the war will change. There seems to be a general assumption that the Kursk incursion will have positive effects for the Ukrainians. But if we have learned anything since the war began more than two and a half years ago, it is that one must be humble when anticipating turning points and breakthroughs. Not so long ago, military analysts were predicting a Ukrainian triumph after kyiv launched its long-awaited counteroffensive. Things did not turn out that way: the counteroffensive failed, and Ukrainian troops failed to break through Russian fortifications.
Andrei Marienko/AP Images
Could the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk be different? Of course, it is still possible. For kyiv, the three-week offensive in Russia has been more successful in terms of territorial gains than last year’s six-month counteroffensive. At the very least, Zelensky can use the Russian conscripts captured so far to break his own soldiers out of Russian custody – something that has already happened.
But long-term success is not guaranteed.
First, despite repeated statements by Ukrainian officials, we still do not know precisely what kyiv’s real goals are at Kursk. Ask four different Ukrainian officials and you will get four different answers, suggesting that kyiv may not even know. The Biden administration certainly does not know—it was not even warned of the offensive by the Ukrainians. Some speculate that the Kursk operation was intended to boost morale, but sending a few thousand battle-hardened troops 1,000 kilometers away from the front line to spread the war into Russia seems like a terribly expensive way to do it.
Zelensky has offered several reasons for the incursion, from creating a buffer zone along part of the Russian-Ukrainian border to pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in serious peace talks. But both goals depend on Ukraine’s ability to hold the largely flat terrain its forces have occupied over the past three weeks. That’s a difficult task, not because the Ukrainians are incapable of doing so, but because their supply lines will inevitably be stretched and exposed to Russian counterattacks. The Russians have responded in a piecemeal fashion but are slowly starting to find their feet, deploying about 30,000 troops to Kursk to stabilize the situation. This may take some time given Russia’s other priorities on the battlefield – such as the advance toward Donetsk – but the mere presence of a Russian counterattack will force Zelensky to make difficult decisions about where to allocate his limited resources.
Second, one must ask whether extending the war to Russia is a sound tactical decision. Zelensky and his military high command have evidently concluded that it is, the idea being that if Russia is forced to fight on its own territory, Moscow will have to divert men and equipment from the front. This, the reasoning goes, would relieve the intense pressure that Ukrainian forces have been under for the past eight months.
Russia, for its part, has not taken the bait, at least not yet. Russian troops have been redeployed from Ukraine to stem the bleeding at Kursk, but Moscow has not hit the most active areas of the front. General Syrskyi has acknowledged this indirectly, admitting that the battlefield around the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk remains “quite difficult” as Russian gliding bombs and artillery pound the Ukrainian defenders. If attacking the Russians on their ground comes at the cost of further Russian gains in Donetsk, what exactly is the point?
Finally, if part of Zelensky’s calculation was to push Putin to negotiate, then the Kursk ploy has backfired. Instead of shocking Moscow into submission, it has convinced the Russian political elite to redouble its efforts. Talks that had been scheduled between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators to explore a mutual de-escalation over energy infrastructure have been suspended by the Russian side. The Russian Foreign Ministry angrily decries the impossibility of negotiations at this time (although it is unclear how interested Russia is in negotiations in the first place). And it is no coincidence that Russian missile and drone attacks on several Ukrainian cities have increased since the Kursk incursion began; on August 26, Moscow launched one of its largest airstrikes against Ukraine, which included 127 missiles and 109 attack drones.
War is a horrible and unpredictable phenomenon. Everyone, including the author, should be more aware of the twists and turns that can result from it.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist at Chicago Tribune.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
