Explaining Ukraine’s hopes with a bold attack in Kursk – and how it might backfire, badly

August, supposedly a quiet summer holiday month in Russia, has instead often witnessed key events in the country’s recent history.

Recall the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, which precipitated the final collapse of the USSR; the 1998 rouble crisis; the sinking of the submarine Kursk in 2000; and the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

So perhaps Ukraine’s unexpected military incursion into Kursk Oblast last week shouldn’t have surprised President Vladimir Putin.

But the audacious Ukrainian move clearly did catch the embarrassed Russian military and political leadership unawares.

Over the past ten days, Ukrainian forces have reportedly made rapid progress, now controlling, according to Ukraine’s top military commander, about 1000 square kilometres of Russian territory.

But why did Ukraine launch this bold incursion? And what are its objectives?

Some have questioned the military logic, especially given the heavy pressure Ukraine is under elsewhere along the front. It’s been suggested that Kyiv aims to draw Russian forces away from the heavily contested front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, especially to relieve severe pressure in the Donetsk region. Launching a distracting manoeuvre arguably makes at least tactical sense.

Yet it’s likely that the purpose of the incursion is as much political as military: seeking to shift the narrative positively, and directed at multiple audiences.

Firstly, at home.

The unexpected and daring Ukrainian attack is a fillip to the morale of weary Ukrainian soldiers and anxious civilians alike. It’s welcome news, against a sombre background of seemingly inexorable setbacks on the battlefield and constant Russian missile attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure, especially its power network.

At its most basic level, then, many Ukrainians will welcome the Kursk incursion as giving Russia a taste of its own medicine.

Likewise, internationally, the Kursk incursion sends a positive message to Ukraine’s supporters, encouraging them – not least in the United States, ahead of the November presidential and Congressional elections – that Ukraine can regain the initiative and the need to stay the course.

But thirdly, and potentially most significantly, the Ukrainian attack also seeks to influence Russian public and political opinion.

Besides drone attacks and scattered acts of suspected sabotage, this is really the first time Ukraine has taken the war onto Russian soil in any sustained fashion. Ever since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has downplayed the negative impacts of what it has insisted on calling the “special military operation”, and described its progress in consistently positive terms. And indeed, life for many Russians, especially in Moscow and St Petersburg, has gone on much as before. The economy has boomed, propped up by massive government spending, not least on military production but also in the social sector.

But with Russia itself now under attack, and indeed part of its territory occupied, that has changed. This will jolt the Kremlin and ordinary Russians alike, despite the regime’s efforts through state-controlled media to minimise the extent and significance of the Ukrainian incursion.

Throughout his quarter-century as Russian president, Putin has sought to portray himself as a strong leader – someone who can be entrusted to safeguard the security of Russia and its people. The Crocus City Hall terrorist bombing outside Moscow in April dented that image somewhat. But the current Ukrainian incursion represents a much greater threat to his “security czar” brand, and can only heighten uncertainty and fear among ordinary Russians.

From the relentless replays of past Russian glories during the Great Patriotic War (aka World War Two), Russians will be ruefully aware of the irony that the Ukrainian incursion has occurred in Kursk – scene of the epochal tank battle in the summer of 1943 between the USSR and German invaders (likewise in August).

What happens next?

It’s surely unlikely that Ukraine intends to occupy the territory it now controls in Kursk Oblast longer-term.

That would also be unwise, reputationally.

Instead, it’s more likely the Ukrainians see its territorial gains, and the Russian prisoners they’ve detained during their incursion, as bargaining chips in any eventual negotiations.

Yet the Ukrainian incursion is risky.

The military situation remains essentially unchanged. In what has become a grinding war of attrition in eastern Ukraine, the Russians have been making progress, albeit slow and costly, gradually pushing back the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian defenders. Ukraine remains short of both personnel and military kit, despite the flow of additional American and European military equipment, including refurbished F-16 fighter aircraft.

There’s no sign (or not yet, in any event) that the Kursk incursion is forcing Russia to divert significant forces or equipment away from the Donbas front to reinforce Kursk.

Meanwhile, the cross-border incursion into Kursk is absorbing troops and equipment that Ukraine needs to bolster its beleaguered defences in Donbas.

And while the Kursk incursion is politically a welcome shot in the arm for Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, and for Ukraine’s allies, all sorely in need of some good news, it could also rebound. There’s a risk that Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk and occupation of Russian territory (however short or long-term this proves) plays unwittingly into the Kremlin’s hands – by reinforcing its propaganda narrative that its “special military operation” is defensive, responding to and intended to thwart NATO’s aggressive designs, using Kyiv as its catspaw.

So this attack is a calculated gamble by Kyiv.

It could pay off, especially if it does prompt redeployment of Russian forces from Donetsk to Kursk, and if it leads to growing pressure at home on the Kremlin to call time on its invasion, although the apathy and fear of the cowed Russian populace warrants scepticism on this latter score.

Equally, it could backfire badly, with Ukrainian troops squandered and forced to withdraw ignominiously, while pressure on Ukraine elsewhere on the front line continues unrelieved. This would leave the Kremlin able to portray the incursion as vindicating its narrative of a besieged Russia.

This seems, then, a pivotal moment in the war, with finely balanced risks either way.

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