As Ukraine’s Kursk incursion forges on the stakes are rising for both sides

An Article By Dan Sabbagh – The Guardian. 15-08-2024

Nine days into Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, and Kyiv is showing increasing confidence. Two soldiers, speaking off the record by a dusty roadside a few miles from the border, said they expected logistics functions to be brought forward “inside Russia” because supply lines were becoming stretched.

Though it is a fragmentary detail – being more specific would endanger life – it demonstrates that as Ukraine’s forces continue to advance into Kursk oblast, Kyiv is gradually becoming more committed to an incursion that may have begun brightly, but the eventual outcome of which remains profoundly uncertain.

Ukrainian operational security has been relatively tight, and soldiers are not supposed to post military successes on social media except with higher-level permission. But Ukrainian media are now being allowed inside Russia, as demonstrated by a report from the 1 + 1 channel, which is close to the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

A worker and a dirt road covered in anti-tank fortifications called dragon’s teeth due to their pyramid shape

It carried a broadcast from Sudzha, five miles inside the border, of Ukrainian soldiers handing out water bottles to the Russian civilians who had chosen not to evacuate. Zelenskiy made the point explicitly later on Wednesday, revealing that as Ukraine’s military campaign expands, Kyiv is being drawn in.

He met senior officials to discuss the Kursk incursion and posted a video of their discussion on Telegram. “A meeting on the situation in the Kursk region. We discussed key issues. Security, humanitarian aid and the establishment of military commandant’s offices, if necessary,” he said.

What may have started, in other words, as a speculative testing of Russia’s defences in Kursk is gradually becoming a full offensive. The constant stream of military activity on the Ukrainian side of the border suggests Kyiv has more armour to commit, though Russia has no shortage of resources at its disposal either.

Kyiv’s incursion has been good for morale at home. It even remains broadly popular even with those displaced from Sumy region. But it has also obscured the difficulties Ukraine is facing in the central section of Donbas oblast, where Russian forces have gained a mile a week in a remorseless advance since 1 July.

The target is Pokrovsk, a strategic road and rail junction that was long considered so far behind the lines that journalists and humanitarian organisations used it as a base. Now it is coming towards the frontline, about nine miles (15km) away, and there are fears that as the Russian guns close in it will suffer the destructive intensity of bombing faced by Bakhmut and Sieverodonestk.

Ukraine is making gains in Russia faster than it is losing ground in Donetsk, but Pokrovsk’s transport connections make it more strategic. There is no great military significance in the Russian territory Ukraine has so far captured, so the calculus is more finely balanced. Kyiv is hoping that Russia will pull resources out from the eastern front, but at the same time it has held back some of its best troops from defending the east too.

The problem for Kyiv is that there is no evidence of Russia removing significant forces from the Donetsk sector. The Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, said overnight that there was only evidence “select elements of Russian irregular units” had been moved so far, a point broadly endorsed by other experts.

Jade McGlynn, a research fellow with King’s College London who is based in Kharkiv, said: “The Russians are taking troops from everywhere but Donbas, at least for now. Kursk is great for morale and God knows Ukraine needed a boost, but some of the soldiers I speak to out in Donbas are still quite unhappy about Kursk as they could really do with elite special forces down there.”

The risk for Ukraine is that it will pour more resources into Kursk when it knows that its incursion is not something the Kremlin can let lie. Intriguingly, Vladimir Putin was reported this week to have appointed Alexei Dyumin to head what the Kremlin has declared a “counter-terrorism operation” to kick the Ukrainians out of Kursk.

Dyumin is a former bodyguard to Putin, whose duties included playing ice hockey with the president. He is even considered by some to be a potential successor. He was a regional governor until recently, but Putin promoted him in May to become secretary of the influential state council. Now he may have been given his most important role yet, though the Kremlin is still to formally confirm the appointment.

The new man’s military experience may be limited, but the selection of a close ally suggests how much importance Putin attaches to the task of tackling the incursion. If the Ukrainian advance into Kursk and potentially neighbouring Belogord provinces cannot be stopped with the military resources available, it would be a surprise if the Kremlin did not commit more in a further attempt to snuff it out.

Ukraine would have to gain a lot more territory than the 400 square miles (1,000 square kilometres) claimed by Zelenskiy earlier this week to do a territory swap with Moscow, given that Russia occupies about 18% of Ukraine, an area roughly the size of Portugal. So the advantages of the operation for now are in part psychological, weakening Putin’s strongman image and boosting morale at home.

They are also political. The surprise incursion shows European governments, and perhaps most importantly US voters, that giving billions in military aid to Ukraine is not a waste. The country’s military has shown it can conduct complex attacks, use armour prudently and not stall against Russian landmines as happened last summer.

The ultimate battle in Kursk is far from over, however, and the stakes are rising for both sides.