How Ukraine's Kursk Offensive Has Changed the War's Dynamic

Russia's - and Putin's - power has been exposed as threadbare. They cannot even defend their own border, let alone expel those who they claim to be inferior - but have violated it. 
Ishaan Tharoor reports in the Washington Post:

The audacious Aug. 6 incursion by Ukrainian forces into Russia has consolidated a de facto occupation. Thousands of Ukrainian troops now control hundreds of square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk region, including more than 100 Russian settlements. They have captured hundreds of Russian soldiers and blown up bridges that facilitate movement of a Russian counterstrike. "Everyone, including our command, thinks this is being done to end the war.” The embarrassment to the Kremlin is its own reward. “That [the incursion] was possible in the first place is much more important than the territory on the ground. This is devastating for the Putin regime. It shows to the Russian population and it shows to the world that the Russian war machine is hollow … It hasn’t been able to protect its border.”

Kyiv is hoping for an escape to victory. The audacious Aug. 6 incursion by Ukrainian forces across the border into Russia has consolidated into what appears to be a de facto occupation. Thousands of Ukrainian troops now control hundreds of square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk region, including more than 100 Russian settlements. They have also captured hundreds of Russian soldiers and blown up bridges that could facilitate the movement of a Russian counterstrike.

The operation marks the most significant invasion of Russian territory since World War II. It was a surprise to both the Kremlin and the White House, with Ukrainian officials opting to keep Western allies in the dark till after they had deployed their forces. In remarks earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky framed their efforts as part of a larger scheme to gain leverage over the Kremlin and force a favorable conclusion to the war.

 

“The main point … is forcing Russia to end the war,” Zelensky said at a Tuesday news conference, gesturing to plans he is preparing to reveal to the White House this fall. “We really want justice for Ukraine. And if this plan is accepted — and, second, if it is executed — we believe that the main goal will be reached.”

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An end to hostilities feels rather remote. Even as Ukraine made inroads into Kursk, Russia turned up the heat on the main front line, pushing further in the industrial Donbas region. Russian glide bombers are still wreaking havoc in villages and towns across Ukraine, while Russian strikes are systematically targeting Ukraine’s energy grid, prompting power cuts and raising fears of what’s to come as the winter months approach.

The incursion into Kursk has still scored Ukraine a dramatic victory. It provided a welcome morale boost to an embattled nation and a symbolic blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin — who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 arguably to carve out a new buffer state in Europe but now finds Zelensky celebrating the creation of a buffer zone on Russian soil.

 

Ukrainian officials have pointed to Russia’s apparent diversion of some of its forces from the war zones within Ukraine to operations aimed at capturing territory in Kursk. They also suggest that Russian aerial operations on targets in northeastern Ukraine, abutting the Kursk region, have thinned out. “We felt relief in tactical aviation,” Ukrainian Col. Vitaly Sarantsev said at a briefing over the weekend. “The enemy has significantly reduced its use in our direction.”

When my colleagues recently journeyed into Ukrainian-occupied Kursk, their Ukrainian interlocutors didn’t cast their operation as an indefinite occupation. “I think this is temporary,” a drone unit commander code-named Boxer told them. “I think everyone, including our command, thinks this is being done to end the war.”

The embarrassment to the Kremlin is its own reward, too. “The fact that [the incursion] was possible in the first place is so much more important than the actual territory on the ground,” Swedish foreign minister Tobias Billström told the Financial Times this week. “This is devastating for the Putin regime. It shows to the Russian population and it shows to the world that the Russian war machine is hollow … It hasn’t been able to protect its border.”

 

Putin has sought to downplay “terrorist” action into Kursk. Russian authorities are trying to maintain their momentum within Ukraine without pulling out many of their contract troops — as opposed to more ineffective, poorly trained conscripts — to deal with the situation in Kursk. “In marshaling forces to meet Ukraine’s incursion, Russia is doing all it can to avoid drawing units from its own offensive in the Donbas,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, to the Associated Press. “Russia currently judges that it can contain the threat on its own soil without compromising its most important goal in Ukraine.”

To keep up the fight, Zelensky and his allies want Western allies to loosen rules on Ukraine using long-range weaponry provided by the West, such as U.S.-provided ATACMS rockets, to hit Russian targets deeper into Russian territory. The Kursk incursion has helped strengthen the argument for such measures, given Russia’s stunned, reeling response to the raid and Ukraine’s desire to take more of the fight to Russian soil. After Ukraine’s foreign minister went to Brussels for meetings Thursday, top E.U. diplomat Josep Borrell echoed the argument.

“The weaponry that we are providing to Ukraine has to have full use, and the restrictions have to be lifted in order for the Ukrainians to be able to target the places where Russia is bombing them. Otherwise, the weaponry is useless,” Borrell said. As my colleagues reported, perhaps the Western government now most reluctant to loosen controls is the United States, with the Biden administration nurturing a long-standing wariness of taking the Kremlin up a ladder of dangerous escalation.

 

Other analysts are more skeptical about what Ukraine will gain with added deep strike abilities. In an essay in Foreign Affairs, Stephen Biddle pointed to the limited strategic efficacy of such measures. “Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, if anything, have hardened the Ukrainian will to fight,” he wrote. “In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, too, strategic bombing failed to induce concessions; it took synchronized combinations of air and ground combat to secure Western war aims.”

“The Kursk incursion has humiliated Russia’s military and demonstrated Ukraine’s resilience, but has not altered the fundamental situation in a long, grinding war of attrition,” wrote my colleague Robyn Dixon. “Ukraine is under increasing pressure to negotiate a deal potentially giving up land for peace, after last summer’s failed counteroffensive, problems with personnel, doubts about future Western weapons deliveries, and fears that if Donald Trump becomes president, he will force a peace deal favorable to Russia.”