How Ukraine’s surprise offensive into Russia has changed the war

A few weeks ago, I speculated in an article in The Hill that Ukraine, having begun to receive F-16 fighters from NATO states, might launch an attack on Crimea, especially if the aircraft possessed an air-to-ground capability. Kyiv’s objective would not necessarily be to retain the peninsula. Rather, by seizing territory that was important to Moscow’s self-image and historical legacy, Kyiv would be in a much stronger negotiating position in the event of a cease-fire, and the conquest of Crimea might even force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

My surmise elicited a mixed response. Some readers thought that the idea was not improbable, while others felt that I was being fanciful, if not delusional. Russia, the latter argued, would not lose Crimea, if only because Ukraine, even with the addition of the F-16s, simply did not have the wherewithal to evict Moscow’s ground troops that were operating there.

As the last two weeks have demonstrated, Ukraine did indeed attack Russian territory — but not Crimea. Instead, Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive against Russia’s Kursk region, overwhelming border units and seizing nearly 400 square miles of Russian territory, while continuing to penetrate into the country. As a result of its offensive, Ukraine has overrun about 30 border towns and forced over 120,000 Russian residents to flee the region.

There can be little doubt that the F-16s, complete with an air-to-ground capability, were a critical factor in the Ukrainian decision to launch the Kursk offensive. The planes’ arrival created significant synergies both with the other increasingly advanced systems that the West has been supplying Kyiv and with Ukraine’s ingenious and creative industrial base, which has yielded a range of capabilities from low-cost but effective drones to powerful electronic warfare systems.

Caught entirely by surprise, Putin has ordered reinforcements to the area, drawing down forces from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in southern Ukraine, as well as from Russian units in its Kaliningrad exclave. Although Putin can continue to call upon an increasing number of draftees, it does appear that his forces are thinly stretched. Thus, while Moscow claims to have begun to repel the Ukrainian offensive, there are few indications on the ground that this is the case.

Kursk, like Crimea, is freighted with massive historical symbolism for Russia. The Battle of Kursk, which lasted from July 5 to Aug. 23, 1943, is considered to be the largest battle in the history of warfare, as well as the largest tank battle ever. The Nazis brought to the battle four full armies, for a total of over 750,000 men as well as more than 2,500 tanks, constituting most of their tanks on the Eastern Front. The Soviets countered with six land armies and an air army totaling nearly 2 million men, and about 5,000 tanks.

The Soviet victory was a major turning point on the Eastern Front. The Battle of Kursk began Moscow’s counteroffensive that led to its successful drive to Berlin nearly two years later. The current Ukrainian offensive into the Kursk region is therefore likely to be every bit as traumatic for Moscow as an attack on Crimea might have been.

Kyiv has made it clear that it has no desire to permanently hold the Russian territory it has seized. Instead, the Ukrainian leadership views the land it now holds as a bargaining chip both to get Russia to negotiate an end to the war and to relinquish its grip on much of Ukraine’s eastern oblasts.

Putin appears to read the situation the same way; he too has stated that the purpose of the Ukrainian offensive is to obtain leverage in a future negotiation. But for the moment, at least, he considers negotiations out of the question.

For its part, Washington denies that it had a hand in planning the Ukrainian offensive. The White House has responded to the Kremlin’s hypocritical complaints about the illegal invasion of Russian territory by pointing out that all Putin needs to do is to order the withdrawal of Russian troops from sovereign Ukrainian land. Ukraine will immediately reciprocate.

Of course, Putin could, on the contrary, heed the urgings of former president Dmitry Medvedev and other belligerent Russian commentators and unleash a tactical nuclear weapon on the invaders. But this would effectively render Kursk a no-man’s land. And should Putin attack Ukraine itself with such a weapon, he cannot predict how NATO might react.

Nevertheless, Putin clearly does not have the wherewithal to fight a conventional war against NATO, should the alliance come to Ukraine’s assistance. He has wisely resisted any impulse to launch a nuclear war, whose results could be devastating for his country.

To achieve the ceasefire and Russian withdrawal from Ukraine that they urgently seek, the U.S. and its allies should go beyond merely lecturing Putin. Instead, they should accelerate the shipment of both munitions and advanced weapons systems, notably F-16s, to bolster the Ukrainian offensive and render it exceedingly difficult for Russia to regain its lost territories.

The longer Ukraine holds on to the Kursk region, the more likely it is that Putin will see no alternative but to negotiate with Kyiv and both bring an end to Russia’s horrific offensive against its smaller neighbor and speedily return to Ukraine its rightful sovereign territory.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.