Three weeks after Ukraine’s audacious assault on Russia’s Kursk region, experts are still trying to determine the long-term impact of a war that has lasted more than two and a half years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the offensive had created a “buffer zone” to slow Russian attacks on the cities of Kharkiv and Sumy while depleting Russian reserves. Those goals did not stop Russia from launching a massive missile and drone attack across Ukraine on Monday, killing at least five people and cutting off electricity and water to millions in the war-torn country.
“Like most previous Russian strikes, this one was equally despicable, targeting critical civilian infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said.
Even before Monday’s attack, Ukrainians were evacuating areas of the Donetsk region as the Russian military continued its advance eastward. Yet the Ukrainian forces that overran Kursk and captured hundreds of Russian soldiers have retained their grip on nearly 1,200 square kilometers, a small fraction of the region where more than a million Russians live.
Incursion into Ukraine:What is behind the slow Russian response to the Ukrainian raid?
Russia ‘gets a taste of its own medicine’
Zev Faintuch, director of research and intelligence at the international security firm Global Guardian, told USA TODAY that the offensive had a “taste of your own medicine” mentality. Faintuch questions the tactical advantages of the offensive, but says it has boosted Ukrainian morale and lowered Russian morale.
The offensive also signals to Western supporters that with increased support it could cause serious damage to Russia’s military and economic infrastructure, Faintuch believes. It could also fuel domestic dissension in Moscow while providing an opportunity to swap land as part of a diplomatic settlement.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment of the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be demanding that his military retake captured territory without sacrificing the stability of his regime or slowing Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine. Nor is there any question of “removing his incompetent but loyal lieutenants,” the assessment said.
It is still too early to predict the results of such a strategy, the assessment adds.
Putin blames US, West for Kursk raid
Putin has blamed the West for the stunning intrusion, though U.S. officials have said they had no prior knowledge of the incursion. Putin has called the incident a “major provocation” and has once again accused the United States of using Ukrainians as a proxy. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a top Putin adviser, has said Russia should now broaden its goals to include taking control of all of Ukraine and “mercilessly defeating and destroying the enemy.”
Joe Chafetz, an intelligence analyst at Global Guardian, said the incursion — while far from decisive — has forced Russia to make difficult choices. It also reveals the possibility that Putin may not be able to end the war on his own terms, Chafetz said.
“kyiv’s incursion into Kursk demonstrated that Ukrainian forces are capable of advancing in a mechanized and complex manner,” he said. And if Ukraine manages to replicate this success, Russia’s strategy of gradual and irreversible advance could fail, he added.
Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow in the Democratic Resilience program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, was an adviser to Putin’s opponent Alexei Navalny before the latter’s mysterious death in a Russian prison six months ago. Luzin says he’s not sure what reports that Ukraine controls more than 90 villages in Kursk really mean. If a few Ukrainian soldiers enter a town and no one stops them, do they control it?
“Villages and towns… are now in the Ukrainian military sphere of influence because the city administrations, in their vast majority, have fled,” he said at a forum last week, adding that “we do not know whether we are at the beginning, the middle or the end of this military operation (which) will only be understood with time.”
Putin denounces a “provocation”Ukrainian troops enter Kursk
Russian citizens may have little interest in Ukraine
Luzin also believes that the seemingly total indifference of Russian society to the offensive in Ukraine could be an indicator of indifference to Putin’s goals of seizing the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts – provinces – in Ukraine and holding on to Crimea, territory that Russia conquered a decade ago and that Ukraine is struggling to reclaim.
This raises the question of how much Russian citizens are willing to sacrifice in Ukraine.
“What does this mean for us? What does this mean for Ukraine?” Mr. Luzin asked. “It means that if the Russians do not care about Kursk, they will never care about Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and other occupied territories of Ukraine.”
