On Tuesday, Russia accused Ukraine’s armed forces of entering its territory through Kursk province with a thousand soldiers and armoured vehicles in an action that President Vladimir Putin described as “a large-scale provocation” and which led him to convene his security council. In three days, Ukraine has occupied 11 villages or settlements and 45 square kilometres of land, taken at least 40 prisoners of war, leaving five dead and 31 wounded, according to data from the Russian Ministry of Defence. It also led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the region and the evacuation of “several thousand inhabitants”, according to the Kremlin.
Three days after the breach in the Ukrainian-Russian border opened, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a message on his website alleging that Ukraine was behind the operation: “Russia brought war to our land, and it must feel sorry for what it has done. We strive to achieve our goals as soon as possible in peacetime, on fair peace terms. And so it will be.” Meanwhile, Mikhail Podoliak, the president’s spokesman, hinted at the veracity of the incursion in a message on the social network X. “The root cause of any escalation, shelling, military actions, forced evacuations and destruction of normal ways of life, including in the Russian Federation’s own territories, such as the Kursk and Belgorod regions, is solely Russia’s unequivocal aggression, including attempts to seize foreign territories,” he wrote. “It is up to the army to say what is happening there,” he later said in statements to television. “Today we have a war that is gradually advancing into the Russian Federation. Will it scare them? Yes. Do they react to anything other than fear? No,” he said.
The military operation initially raised the question of whether it was really the Ukrainian army – and not the paramilitary groups opposed to the Kremlin, which have carried out such actions in border areas during the war – that was carrying out the largest incursion into Russian territory since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. The second question was what they were trying to achieve with this; and a third: why now?
The analysts and military experts consulted accept the information from the renowned think tank The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) confirmed the Ukrainian movements in its daily report on Thursday, based on geolocated images and internal Russian sources.
Renowned military analyst Mikhail Samus argues that Ukraine’s aim is to put pressure on Russian commanders to decide where to send their military resources, since a large part of them are in the Donbas region, partially controlled since 2014 by Moscow through pro-Russian separatists. “Putin has been trying to occupy Donetsk and Lugansk for 10 years; he wants to finish doing so before the American elections in November and he is going to invest all possible resources to achieve this,” he emphasizes.
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Indeed, Russian troops have stepped on the gas this summer in Donetsk province, with important strategic victories in several directions thanks to the abundant shipment of infantry, ammunition and weapons. These movements take place in a context of certain urgency, since the former president of the United States and Republican candidate for the elections of November 4, Donald Trump, has warned that, if he wins, he intends to end the war. And Putin wants to have that Ukrainian territory in his power in the face of a negotiation scenario. With an action like the one in Kursk, Ukraine puts the Russian army in a dilemma, suggests Samus. “They can stop the offensive in Donbas to defend Kursk or they can allocate fewer resources and risk losing some territory.”
Zelensky is also under pressure from the global situation, as resisting the invader — and the money and weapons needed to do so — depends greatly on who wins the US election, since Trump is against continuing to finance the war.
It is therefore in kyiv’s interest to gain ground in the face of future peace negotiations. According to Oleksii Melnik of the Razumkov Centre in kyiv: “If Ukraine occupies a part of Russian territory, it can propose an exchange. It is very ambitious, but it is a clear political objective.”
Melnik stresses how strategic Kursk Oblast is, as there is a functioning nuclear power plant there, and the town of Sudzha, where fighting continues, is home to the last operational distribution station for Russian natural gas going to Europe via Ukraine. The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod pipeline will carry about 14.65 billion cubic meters of gas in 2023, roughly half of Russia’s gas exports to Europe, according to Reuters.
For now, Ukraine’s gas transmission operator has reported that fuel is moving normally to European consumers, but there has been concern in the European market, with prices up 4.5% on Wednesday, the highest level since December, according to Bloomberg. As for the nuclear power plant, just 60 kilometers from where the offensive is taking place, the Russian National Guard has reported that security around the facility has been reinforced.
Actions like Kursk are known in military jargon as asymmetric operations, meaning those that are carried out with a small number of forces, but are effective. Samus dares to predict another: “Ukrainian forces may start new operations in the direction of Crimea with the new air weapons they have obtained, because there Ukraine has information from NATO, as well as aviation, and can destroy Russian bases,” he predicts.
Ukraine has recently received the first F-16 fighters promised by its Western partners, as well as financial aid from the United States (2.3 billion euros for air defence and anti-tank weapons) and the European Union, which announced at the end of July the contribution of 1.5 billion euros from frozen Russian assets.
According to the expert, Ukraine may consider destroying the land corridor linking Russia to the occupied Crimean peninsula and blocking access and the entry of supplies. “It doesn’t have to be a large-scale ground operation, but just blocking the corridor. This would have a big impact because it would send the message that Russia cannot control Ukraine, and Ukraine would be in a stronger position for future negotiations,” Samus reasons.
Silence as an answer
In Ukraine, the authorities are keeping quiet about the events of the past few days in Kursk. Zelensky did not mention them in his daily address to the nation, beyond encouraging soldiers to “put pressure on and weaken the enemy side.” The daily update from the Ukrainian General Staff on the situation at the front mentions only that fighting has intensified in the Ukrainian region of Sumi, bordering Russia’s Kursk, where 6,000 people have been ordered to evacuate, and that the enemy was using planes, helicopters and artillery, but without making progress and with “significant losses.”
He think tankISW gives credence to claims by Ukrainian military observer Konstantin Mashovets, who claims that it is the Ukrainian Armed Forces that have penetrated into Russian territory. According to Mahosvets, an unspecified unit of the Chechen-based 71st Motorized Rifle Regiment had been deployed directly to the Russian Sudzhensky district. This information “coincides with some reports from Ukrainian and Russian sources about the presence of Chechen units in the Sudzha area for more than a week,” the ISW report says.
The United States says it had no advance notice of Kiev’s alleged cross-border plans. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that Washington had asked Ukraine to know the “targets” of the incursion, and supported Ukraine’s “common-sense” actions to stop attacks by Russian forces. “We will be reaching out to the Ukrainian military to learn more about their objectives,” she said.
As for the information provided by Russia, ISW says the Kremlin’s response has so far been controversial, with Russian officials “struggling to strike a balance between presenting these efforts as a notable escalation by Ukraine and avoiding exaggerating their potential consequences and risking domestic discontent,” its Aug. 7 report said. Even several prominent pro-Russian bloggers criticized the country’s military leaders on Wednesday for failing to thwart the incursion.
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