The Kursk operation: a huge gamble for Ukraine…and the West
The Kursk operation: a huge gamble for Ukraine…and the West
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia puts the Kremlin under pressure and presents an opportunity for Kyiv and its western allies to improve their bargaining position ahead of any negotiations.
The Ukrainian operation in Russia’s Kursk region began in late July with several days of airstrikes before Kyiv’s ground forces quickly advanced several miles deep into Russian territory on August 6, 2024. Since then, according to various reports, they have established an expanded foothold of as much as 1,000 square kilometres, destroyed a lot of Russian equipment, and inflicted heavy casualties on Russian forces.
A change in Ukrainian strategy?
This is an operation of many firsts. It is the first significant offensive Ukraine has launched since the much-anticipated but ultimately unsuccessful counter-offensive a year ago. It is the first time that regular Ukrainian troops – rather than the Ukraine-based Russian armed groups that have regularly launch cross-border incursions, especially in the Belgorod region – have mounted a major operation inside the Russian Federation. If one does not count the Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969, it is also the first time foreign troops have entered Russia since the German invasion of 1941. After a long period of gradual, if costly, advances along the 1,000km-long front line inside Ukraine, it is the first major military challenge the Kremlin has encountered since Ukrainian summer offensive of 2022. As such, and especially if it is not swiftly contained, it is also the first major challenge to the authority of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, since the abortive insurgency by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group in June 2023.
And it is the first operation in which it is not clear what the Ukrainian objectives are. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is reported to have likened his country’s successes to a growing “exchange fund” – most likely in terms of territory and prisoners of war. Of these two, the former is the more significant in the long term, the latter may have short-term benefits when it comes to Ukraine’s ability to recruit and retain soldiers. After all, not abandoning captured soldiers and bringing prisoners of war home from Russia is important to the legitimacy of the government.
The issue of territory, and especially Russian territory, however, is critical for the Ukraine’s position in any future negotiations with Russia. This will matter especially if Donald Trump returns to the White House after the US elections in November 2024. A deal that he, and his (current) vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance, are likely to put is land for peace. And if Ukraine has Russian land to bargain with, it will reduce the territorial concessions it has to make regarding Russian-occupied Ukrainian lands.
This is a plausible calculation in the abstract, but it requires for Ukraine to hold onto sizable portions of the territory that it now controls as a result of the surprise offensive over the past week. Russia may, at present, not be in a position to recapture all this territory, but it is a long time to the US elections in November and even longer to Trump’s inauguration in January, if that were indeed to happen. Not only will Ukraine need to be able to sustain its troops in Russia – supply them with ammunition, food and fuel and rotate them on a regular basis – it will also have to be able to resist the inevitable Russian pushback on land and in the air. This will likely prove challenging given Russia’s continued air superiority. Worsening weather conditions over the coming months, too, will not improve Ukraine’s ability to hold large swaths of territory across the border. From that perspective, the timing of the Ukrainian incursion appears to be a huge gamble.
Immediate benefits
Apart from an improved position in terms of future prisoner exchanges, however, there are also other likely short-term benefits from Ukraine’s cross-border operation. On the one hand, there is the embarrassment that operation has caused to President Putin himself. The flipside of that is the obvious morale boost that Ukraine’s armed forces and general public have received from these military successes. This at least offsets the psychological impact of continuing if slow advances that Russian troops keep achieving especially in the Donetsk region of the front inside Ukraine—having been on the backfoot in the war since late last year is likely one of the factors that has caused Ukrainian public opinion to shift more towards accepting territorial concessions to Russia as part of a possible peace agreement.
On the other hand, there are also likely short-term military benefits that cannot be discarded. Moscow will eventually need to move more significant numbers of troops to confront Kyiv’s forces in the Kursk region—and these are likely to come from the front lines inside Ukraine if they are to be a match for Ukrainian units. This would relieve some of the pressure that Ukrainian defenders are currently facing in the east and south of the country. And if Ukraine can sustain its military operation inside Russia for some time to come, Putin may be forced to reconsider a wider mobilisation – something that he has so far resisted because it would be deeply unpopular with key constituencies on whose support he and his regime depend.
In addition, Ukraine’s offensive also creates a buffer zone on the Russian side of the border, which, in turn, offers greater protection to Ukrainians and Ukrainian infrastructure inside the country. The operation under way in the Kursk region denies Russia the ability to strike, for example, targets in Ukraine’s Sumy oblast from there, which has been particularly hard hit by Russian attacks of late.
Russia’s response
In response to Ukraine’s incursion, the Kremlin has rushed forces to the region but has so far failed to halt the Ukrainian advance, let alone drive Ukrainian forces from Russian soil. According to so far unconfirmed reports, Putin has appointed Alexei Dyumin to head up the 'counter-terrorist' response to the Ukrainian incursion. This is significant in several ways.
First, there is the personnel dimension. Dyumin is a former bodyguard of Putin, but also served as deputy head of the GRU military intelligence service, deputy defence minister, and until the end of May, 2024, as governor of the Tula region. He was then appointed as secretary to the State Council--a body that brings together all the governors of Russia's regions and is chaired by the Russian president. The choice of Dyumin—someone clearly outside the traditional military hierarchy—is indicative of Putin's lack of trust in his military leaders to get the job. Dyumin's handling of this crisis could therefore either accelerate or end his rise among the Russian political elite. If he is successful, it would potentially cement his status as a prime candidate to succeed Putin.
Second, Putin's phraseology--referring to Ukraine's operation as a provocation requiring a 'counter-terrorist' response--implies that he is still reluctant to admit that he has plunged Russia into a war with its neighbour. Rather, the counter-terrorist operation now underway inside Russia sits next to the 'special military operation' conducted in Ukraine. Both mask the true extent of the problem that Putin now has. On the one hand, the Russian president has to deal with a very costly war in Ukraine that has fundamentally altered the global geopolitical landscape and left Moscow with few alternatives to an unflattering and difficult-to-manage alliance with China, Iran, and North Korea. On the other hand, it undermines further the perception of Putin's own competence and that of his key military leaders in their ability to safeguard Russian national security. Even if they are eventually able to contain and push back the Ukrainian forces that are for now firmly lodged surprisingly deep inside Russia, the very fact that they could get as far as they have for as long as they did is an undeniable lapse.
And third, Putin has doubled down on one of his key justifications for his war of aggression against Ukraine--that this is all the fault of the west. Apparently claiming that “the west is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians”, is another indication that, for Putin, this war is about much more than Ukraine's membership of NATO or the EU. And this is an important guide to what can be expected from Moscow in the long-term when it comes to potential negotiations with Kyiv over an end to the war. What Moscow will want out of that is a weakening of Ukraine and the west and a relative strengthening of its position, vis-a-vis NATO in particular, with a view of an improved starting point in the next round of confrontation. This will be important for Putin domestically, including in terms of his legacy. Any such preferential outcome will potentially also enhance Russia's weight in any Chinese-led alliance emerging as a counterpoint to the US and its allies.
Risks for the west?
This continued framing of the conflict as one between Russia and the west also raises the stakes for Ukraine's western allies, and quite significantly so. It potentially gives Russia an opportunity to claim that NATO as a whole, or individual NATO members, have become co-belligerents and are therefore legitimate targets for Russian escalation of the conflict.
So far, Ukraine’s Western partners have been careful to restrict the use of their weapons by Kyiv to operations that were aimed at defending the country and liberating territory illegally occupied by Russia. With some reluctance, striking Russian military bases and supply routes directly used by the Kremlin for its aggression against Ukraine was also deemed an appropriate use of Western-supplied arms and ammunitions.
Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region is an entirely new ballgame in this respect. The United Kingdom has already stated that, with exception of its long-range Storm Shadow missiles, Kyiv is permitted to use all British equipment in its operation inside Russia. The United States, too, has not raised any objections yet, and neither has Germany. This means that three of Ukraine’s most important suppliers of military aid have lifted some of the restrictions that they had imposed on Kyiv for fear of Russian escalation. This, too, is a gamble, given that President Putin continues to blame the West for the war and this recent escalation.
Yet, Russia has used this argument repeatedly over the past two-and-half years of its war of aggression and never acted on any threatened escalation. It is unlikely to do so now. On the one hand, it would require Putin to acknowledge a state of war and on the other hand it would very likely trigger an Article 5 response from NATO and a full-scale military confrontation. Neither is in Putin's interest, and the latter could not possibly achieve as much as Putin might hope to achieve through negotiations, especially if he enters them from a position of strength.
Ukraine's operation in the Kursk region is likely to deny the Russian president this opportunity and tilt the playing field further in favour of Kyiv ahead of any future talks. For that reason alone, the current Ukrainian effort is worth western backing and calling Putin’s bluff.
The ultimate outcome of Ukraine’s cross-border operation in Russia’s Kursk province may not be known for some time. While it is difficult to imagine right now that it will be a gamechanger in the war as a whole, for all the short-term benefits that it has already brought, it is unlikely to be remembered as a complete failure.
This is an updated and expanded version of two earlier articles for The Conversation and Channel News Asia.
We hope you'll share Navigating the Vortex with anyone you think might find it of interest. Also, you can listen to the Navigating the Vortex podcast via the website or on all major podcast platforms, including: