Ukraine’s gamble against Russia risks becoming blunder 

The Ukrainian advance into Russia’s Kursk region has so far failed to achieve one of its main objectives: diverting Russian troops from the front lines of eastern Ukraine in a bid to reshape the battlefield.

Ukraine’s surprise August incursion has achieved other goals, including dealing a blow to Russia’s image of strength, destroying military assets and taking territory and prisoners for negotiating leverage.

But the failure of the more crucial goal to divert troops has opened the door to criticism of Kyiv’s military gamble, especially as Russia makes advances along the war’s 600-mile eastern front line.

Russian forces have continued pounding away in Ukraine, taking vast swaths of territory in the past month and closing in on the key rail junction town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who just weeks ago was expressing frustration with the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk, touted his military’s progress while visiting a school. 

“The enemy did not achieve the main task that they set themselves: to stop our offensive in the Donbas,” he said. “We have not had such a pace of offensive in the Donbas for a long time.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has argued the Kursk offensive is a key part of Kyiv’s strategy and would be included in a proposal for winning the war that he plans to present to the United States this month.

Zelensky said in a Sunday video address that repeated Russian strikes on cities across Ukraine has “proved the correctness of our tactics, particularly in Kursk.” 

“We must push the war back to where it came from, into Russia,” he said. “And not just in the border areas. The terrorist state must feel what war truly is.” 

But some Ukrainian civilians and soldiers have publicly questioned the Kursk offensive at a time when Russia’s army is using its mass to press forward across the front lines, and particularly in Donetsk. Moscow is aiming to take the rest of the region, along with the neighboring Luhansk province, to cement control in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland. 

Mariana Bezuhla, a Ukrainian member of Parliament, said Ukrainian commanders have placed “zombie squads” and inexperienced troops to defend Pokrovsk. 

“Now we have further consequences,” she wrote last week on Facebook. “Human lives and territories.” 

Capturing Pokrovsk would help Russian forces by severing a crucial supply line that Ukraine uses to defend its troops on the front line. It would also help them advance further into Donetsk and threaten Ukrainian positions in southeastern Ukraine. 

Ukrainian officials have ordered mass evacuations in recent days from Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of some 60,000, with Russian forces just a few miles from the town. 

George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said the Kursk operation was still in its early stages but “looks like it’s heading toward a failure.” 

“The Russians have not diverted significant numbers of forces from the front lines in Ukraine. If anything, they’ve stepped on the accelerator pedal,” he said. “There seems to be a great deal of skepticism about what this incursion is going to accomplish, and I think growing concerns that it was a blunder.” 

Russia appears to have accepted the reality of Ukrainian troops in Kursk for now. The Institute for the Study of War assessed this week that “Putin is attempting to preserve the Russian drive on Pokrovsk at the expense of delaying the clearing of Kursk.” 

Beebe said Russia has also turned the Kursk operation into an opportunity to take out Ukrainian troops and armor, which have suffered high casualties in the Russian region.

“The Ukrainians simply lose more men, lose more armor, lose more weaponry, use up ammunition,” he said. “And from the Russian point of view, that’s all good. So I don’t think they’re in any hurry to end this incursion.”

Ukraine has seized some 500 square miles of land in Kursk, captured hundreds of Russian soldiers and taken 100 settlements, including the key town of Sudzha.

Zelensky also told NBC News this week that Russia has diverted 60,000 troops from Ukraine but did not specify where they were pulled from.

But Ukraine’s gains in Kursk are minimal compared to the nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory that Russia occupies.

Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said Ukraine’s territory grabs in Kursk amount to 0.0064 percent of Russia’s total land area and 0.138 percent of its population. 

“The operation is a tactical success but not a major strategic achievement,” he said in an email. “It has bolstered Ukrainian morale and exposed some continued Russian weaknesses, but there are clear limits to how far they can advance.”

Walt said the war “will be determined primarily by what happens on the ground in Ukraine, not by the Kursk incursion.” 

“Indeed, this short-term Ukrainian success may eventually be seen as a strategic blunder, if it weakened Ukraine’s defenses in the east and allowed Russia to make more rapid gains there,” he added. “Russia can afford to let Ukraine occupy a tiny slice of its territory, knowing that it will be able to restore full control later.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, said Ukraine is looking to use Kursk territory for negotiations after “recognizing they’re not going to get back most of their land” through a counteroffensive. 

But “there’s no way Putin’s going to do a 1,000-to-1 trade,” he said, noting the discrepancies between Russian-held land in Ukraine and the Kursk territory held by Kyiv. 

O’Hanlon added there’s “definitely been a cost” to the Kursk operation by reshuffling troops into Kursk at a time when Ukrainian units are outgunned and outmanned at home. 

“There’s no doubt there’s a downside,” he said. “They really should have tried to add, in some ways, new forces to strengthen their defenses, not to go on the offense.” 

But Elina Beketova, a democracy fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said the Kursk incursion has its benefits, including protecting the northeastern Ukrainian regions of Sumy and Kharkiv from Russian attacks, and that it could also hurt Moscow in the long run. 

“As time goes on, the Kremlin will increasingly be forced to withdraw resources from Ukraine and redirect them to the Kursk direction,” she said. “And it shows that Ukraine can take this initiative — that Ukraine, that Ukrainians, can take it and show the whole world, like, look, ‘Ukrainian troops are on the territory of Russia.’” 

Russian troops have made huge progress in Ukraine since the Kursk operation began, taking 184 square miles of territory in August, the largest gain since October 2022, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War analyzed by Agence France-Presse. 

Besides Pokrovsk, the towns of Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, also in the Donetsk, are under the sight of Russian advances. Both could prove instrumental for the Kremlin’s objective of taking the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and then the rest of the eastern region. 

The pace of Russia’s advance is exposing the weakness in Ukraine’s front line positions, which have for months struggled to halt Russian troops, mostly because of a lack of manpower. Ukraine has lowered the draft age but has yet to see its ranks significantly replenished. 

Zelensky has said Ukraine does not seek to occupy Russia forever but that he will hold on to the Russian territory indefinitely. But doing so will continue to expose Ukrainian troops on the front lines of eastern Ukraine.  

Michael Butler, associate professor of international relations at Clark University, said there is “increasing concern” inside of Ukraine at a time when it is not only struggling on the battlefield, but also when future support from Western allies is uncertain, with the U.S. election just around the corner.

Russia “redoubling their efforts in Donetsk and pushing forward, the maybe suboptimal outcomes from the Kursk offensive, the changing political landscape … and concerns in Ukraine about the kind of support they can expect going forward are pointing to a critical moment,” he said.