With its daring incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Ukraine has attempted to reshuffle the cards in the conflict after months of paralysis in its eastern Donbas region. It exposed Russian military weaknesses and could strengthen Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table.
A Ukrainian soldier scrambles up the wall of a village school in Russia’s Kursk region near the western border with Ukraine. Hoisted by a colleague, he reaches a red, white and blue Russian flag flapping in the summer breeze and tears it down to resounding cheers from Ukrainian soldiers gathered to mark the event, many recording the scene on their mobile phones.
The scene is repeated in several Russian villages in the video clip widely circulating on Ukrainian social networks. They were unimaginable just a few weeks ago as Ukraine, forced on the defensive in the eastern Donetsk region by last year’s failed counteroffensive, lost towns and villages to advancing Russian forces.
Suddenly, the war equation dramatically changed – in the most unexpected place. In an audacious military offensive that caught even Kyiv’s powerful Western backers by surprise Ukrainian forces on August 6 crossed the Russian border into Kursk. It marked the largest military incursion by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II.
Ten days after the attack was launched, Moscow on Friday was still trying to put on a brave face, deflecting Russia’s failure to protect its border by putting the blame on NATO.
Nikolai Patrushevin, an influential aide to President Vladimir Putin, dismissed Western assertions that the US and its European allies were not given advance notice of the Kursk offensive.
"The operation in the Kursk region was also planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services," Patrushevin told the Russian Izvestia daily, without offering any evidence of his claim.
"Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory," he maintained.
Read moreKremlin aide says NATO and the West helped Ukraine attack Russia
Russia and Ukraine have both claimed advances in the Kursk region. Ukraine on Thursday said it now controlled scores of settlements and Sudzha, a town eight kilometres (five miles) from the border.
"We have taken control of 1,150 square kilometres of territory and 82 settlements," said top Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrsky.
Russia meanwhile said it had recaptured a village from Ukrainian forces in the Kursk border region and announced it was sending "additional forces" to the neighbouring Belgorod region.
More than a week after the launch of the invasion, with Russian troops still struggling to drive out the invaders, analysts are examining Kyiv’s military strategy, goals, and the implications for the Ukraine war, which has ground on for two-and-a-half years.
Russian intelligence warning ignored
Far from the epicentre of the fighting, the Kursk region was an easier target than any other on the 960-kilometre front in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The surprise element, for Moscow, was heightened by the fact that Ukrainian authorities had been warning for several months about their shortage of soldiers and ammunition.
Under the circumstances, Russian military command could not have imagined a Ukrainian attack on such a scale. “This operation also came as a surprise to the entire Ukrainian population. Nobody expected it,” said Tetyana Ogarkova, journalist and head of the international department at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
A few Russian officials though did have an inkling of a discreet Ukrainian buildup in the Sumy region across the border from Kursk.
A report submitted to Russian military leadership about a month before the attack noted that, “forces had been detected and that intelligence indicated preparations for an attack,” Andrei Gurulyov, a prominent member of Russia’s Parliament and a former high-ranking army officer, said on national TV.
“But from the top came the order not to panic, and that those above know better,” Gurulyov lamented.
Russian general staff either did not believe, or did not want to believe the intelligence report.
Attack is the best form of defence
Faced with the rapid Ukrainian advance, the Russian response has been slow to materialise. While its forces have been concentrated in eastern Ukraine for several months, the opening of this new front has forced Moscow to mobilise troops urgently to protect the Kursk area.
“This is certainly part of the Ukrainian strategy,” said General Jean-Paul Paloméros, former chief of staff of the French Air Force. “Through this operation, the Ukrainians are forcing the Russians to reveal their military capabilities and reorganise their manpower by dispatching soldiers to Kursk.”
“Nobody knows the Ukrainian army's exact objectives, but this incursion appears to be a survival operation,” said Ogarkova. “The Ukrainian lines hadn't moved for several months. By attacking Russia, the Ukrainian army forced it to divert attention to other places and changed the dynamic.”
“I think the Ukrainian general staff assessed the cost-effectiveness of the operation and decided that attack was the best defence,” said Paloméros. “But the big question now is, what will Kyiv do next? Attacking is all well and good, but you need the means to hold ground. And Ukraine is in danger of running out of that quickly.”
Decisive days ahead
The next few days promise to be decisive on the battlefield. Will Ukrainian troops withdraw or try to hold their positions? And if they opt for the latter, what are the risks for the Ukrainian forces in Russia?
On Wednesday, officials in Kyiv said Ukraine would use seized Russian territory as a "buffer zone" to shield its north from Russian strikes. Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said the buffer zone would “protect border communities from daily hostile shelling”.
"Our military plan to ... open humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians: both in the direction of Russia and in the direction of Ukraine," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on the messaging app Telegram.
Kyiv plans to arrange access for international humanitarian organisations likely to include the Red Cross and UN agencies, Ukrainian officials told Reuters.
"In the 'buffer zone' food, medicine, and other items necessary for the civilian population should be provided," Ukraine's human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said on Telegram.
On Thursday, Ukrainian armed forces chief Syrsky said Kyiv had set up a military commandant's office in the occupied part of Kursk. The new office “must ensure order and also [meet] all the needs of the local population", Syrsky said in a written statement on his Telegram channel.
The announcements suggested that Kyiv intended to dig in and the hold ground captured in the offensive.
The timing, Paloméros noted, was critical. “This incursion into Russian territory is a gamble by the Ukrainians to regain control. Everyone realises that the coming months, before winter, are going to be crucial. The Ukrainians therefore have every interest in trying to reshuffle the cards now to put themselves back in a more favourable situation by weakening the Russian army on the eastern front,” he noted.
The former French Air Force chief of staff does not believe that Ukraine plans to hold on to captured Russian positions in the long term. “The Ukrainians also want to distance themselves from what the Russians have done: they are not there to attack Russia, to attack the population or the territory, but for self-defence,” he noted.
“Russian troops will regain control sooner or later,” agreed Ogarkova. “The aim was to draw attention away from the Donetsk and Kherson regions, and this has been at least partially achieved.”
Seeking ‘fair’ negotiation terms
In addition to the military objectives, some Ukrainian officials have said the primary goal of the Kursk offensive was political.
On Friday, Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's aide, said the incursion was aimed at forcing Russia to negotiate on fair terms.
“Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories,” said Podolyak in a statement posted on X. "In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process," he added.
“We have absolutely no plans to beg: “Please, sit down to negotiate”. Instead, we have proven, effective means of coercion,” Podolyak maintained.
Podolyak’s statement came as Russia on Friday continued to make advances in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Military authorities in Pokrovsk urged civilians to speed up their evacuation because the Russian army was quickly closing in on the strategic town.
Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of about 60,000, is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes. It would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the Donetsk region than ever before.
Whatever the military or political outcomes, the shock Ukrainian incursion on Russian soil does not look good for Putin.
“Politically speaking, this is a very hard blow for Vladimir Putin, who never expected such an attack. It just goes to show that Russia is weaker than it wanted people to believe,” said Ogarkova.
On Monday, Putin made his most detailed televised remarks on the Ukrainian incursion. Looking grim and exasperated at a security meeting in Moscow, Putin ordered his defence chiefs to expel Ukrainian forces from the region.
He has not made any public comments on the invasion since that August 12 television appearance. The silence is telling: Putin has a history of distancing himself from bad news.
This is an updated translation of the original in French.
