The bold and surprising incursion across the border into the Kursk region of Russia has won Ukraine the temporary possession of several Russian villages and a few hundred square miles of Russian territory. But the strategically cheap Russian land may have been bought at a very costly price. The Ukrainian armed forces managed a lightning advance through largely undefended territory. But that territory is defended now, and the advance seems already to have been slowed. And though it seems to have lost momentum well short of its goals, Ukraine may still have to pay the full price.
Ukraine’s decision to take the war across the border may have been made out of the desperate realization that the war is lost. The Russian advance in Donbas is slow but inexorable. It moves forward at a horrible cost of Ukrainian lives, military equipment and ammunition. It now threatens the city of Pokrovsk, a strategic location whose fall could cut off Ukraine’s ability to supply its forces in the east and facilitate Russia’s capture of Donbas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, made the decision to take the best trained and best equipped troops the Ukrainian armed forces has and remove them from the Donbas front, where the real war is being fought and where they are being existentially missed, and send them into Kursk to win land that few in the U.S. or NATO think they have a hope of holding. What calculation makes sense of that strategic decision? Unless Zelensky and Syrsky know that the end is near.
Perhaps the calculation was that Ukraine’s best troops could be sent to the Donbas front to defend against the Russian invasion or they could be sent to Kursk to invade Russia. In the first case, they would inevitably fail to halt the overwhelming Russian advance; in the second case, they might change the facts on the ground. In either scenario, Ukraine’s best troops will be defeated and their Western equipment lost, but in the first they will be killed while achieving nothing but a short delay in defeat. In the second, they will be killed with the hope of assisting military and political objectives.
The military objective may have been to create a crisis in Kursk that would force Russia to divert troops from Ukrainian territory to Russian territory and relieve the pressure on the Donbas front. The political objective may have been to seize Russian territory that could be bargained back in exchange for occupied Ukrainian territory and improve Ukraine’s position at a negotiating table at which Ukraine now realized it had to take a seat, since there was no longer a hope that their political objectives could be won militarily.
Though Ukraine considered several options for some time, the risky decision may have been catalyzed, not only by national desperation, but also by personal desperation by Ukraine’s commander-in-chief. Sources familiar with the decision-making by General Syrsky told The Economist that Syrsky “was under pressure.” Russia was irreversibly on the offensive, Ukraine was running out of weapons and, even more seriously, out of people. Avdiivka had fallen, the Russian front was advancing, the Ukrainian front was crumbling and the pivotal hub of Pokrovsk was in danger. He was even hearing rumors that he “was on the verge of being dismissed.”
So Syrsky secretly set his plan. Ukraine would invade Russia at a place that was little defended because it was of little value. Russia would not expect it. Highly trained and well equipped and supported Ukrainian troops would advance quickly, seize territory and perhaps even capture the Kursk nuclear power plant. Russia would be forced to divert troops from Ukraine, relieving the desperate situation in Donbas, and Ukraine would hold a better hand at the negotiating table. Russia would have to negotiate land to secure the return of their land and, especially, of a nuclear plant that would be hazardous to win back militarily.
But the advance ran out of momentum well short of the nuclear plant. Russia has moved in defences without moving significant forces out of Ukraine, and Ukraine is now losing troops and equipment in Russia the way it is in Ukraine. Exposed troops, tanks, mobile air defense missile launchers and supply lines have come under massive air strikes.
If the Ukrainian offensive fails, the spectacular ephemeral gains will have come at a great cost. Costs could include more rapid and painful losses in Donbas, loss of the opportunity to negotiate an end to the war, and loss of trust when those negotiations are forced upon Ukraine.
The most immediate cost of diverting elite troops and Western equipment from Donbas to Kursk is the further deterioration and weakening of Ukraine’s defenses along the Donbas front. Russia’s military is taking advantage of that costly decision. Though Ukraine had counted on the invasion pulling Russian troops out of Donbas, so far, that does not seem to have happened. The Ukrainian armed forces say that the “relatively small” number of Russian forces that have been drawn out of Ukraine is “not… enough to indicate any differences or weakening in… hostilities.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin says both that, far from relieving pressure on the Donbas front, “on the contrary,” Russian offensive operations will increase and that, far from expediting negotiations, the incursion into Russia has made negotiations less likely.
Both claims appear to be true. The Ukrainian General Staff reports that the number of Russian assaults in the area of Pokrovsk have roughly doubled since the Kursk offensive and that they are increasing every day. On August 19, as Russian forces advanced to within 6 miles of Pokrovsk, Ukraine ordered the evacuation of families with children.
As for negotiations, there is not only the possibility that the Ukrainian offensive could derail future negotiations but the actuality that it already has. The Washington Post reports that Russia and Ukraine had both “signaled their readiness to accept the arrangement in [a] lead-up to the summit” in Qatar that would have seen both sides agree to cease strikes on the other’s energy and power infrastructure. The negotiations would have been the first since the peace talks and grain deal in Istanbul in the first months of the war. There were “just minor details left to be worked out” when the Qatar talks “were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region.” Russia has not completely killed the talks but has put them on pause.
Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have reduced Ukraine’s power by 50%. One Ukrainian official said that Ukraine has “one chance to get through this winter, and that’s if the Russians won’t launch any new attacks on the grid.” A very cold winter could be an additional painful cost of the Kursk offensive.
And, as if trust could be hurt any further, a final cost of the Kursk offensive could be the continued erosion of trust. Russia was already distrustful of talks of peace since the recent revelations that Germany, France and Ukraine were just using the 2014-2015 Minsk process to lull Russia into a ceasefire with the promise of a peace settlement in order to buy time for the Ukrainian armed forces to build up for a military solution. That distrust has now been fed by the Kursk offensive. Recent statements by Zelensky about the preparedness of Ukraine to negotiate, and even to negotiate territory, may be seen by Russia, rightly or wrongly, as once again anesthetizing Russia with promises of peace while preparing for war. As The New York Times reports, “Even as Ukraine was signaling its readiness to talk, its military was preparing for one of its most daring attacks since Mr. Putin’s invasion began in February 2022.” The Times suggests that “[t]he flurry of Ukrainian talk about peace may have served in part as strategic deception, encouraging Russia’s leadership to see meekness and let down its guard.”
Barring a sudden reversal and a spectacular success, the Kursk offensive brings the risk of ephemeral gain at enormous cost. Those costs might include accelerated defeat in Donbas, a reduced likelihood of future negotiations, a lost opportunity for current negotiations, a very cold winter for Ukraine, and further loss of trust that erodes the chance for peace.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
