- Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk region last Tuesday.
- They have captured around 1,000 square kilometers of Russian land so far, Kyiv’s top general said.
- That figure is almost as much territory as Russia has seized in Ukraine this year.
Blitzing into largely undefended territories and nabbing large amounts of territory is kind of the easy part. As anyone who plays any sort of RTS, the key question is how you set up defenses and maintain logistics to thwart counter-offensives. The good news is that Ukraine has options. They can choose to dig in before Russia amasses troops to attack and legitimately try to hold onto the territory, or they can simply back out and use this as a skirmish to divide Russian forces before launching another offensive elsewhere.
This seems to a) be intended to divide Russian attention and spread their forces out, b) be used in negotiation and applying domestic pressure to Putin, and c) provide a greater buffer for air-defense to counter inbound artillery and missiles. Who knows for sure though.
That makes sense. I’d have questions about all of those too
a) be intended to divide Russian attention and spread their forces out Do we know if that’s happening? Russia has a lot of people and equipment and it’s not obvious to me that they need to pull many resources from other fronts to reinforce Kursk.
b) be used in negotiation and applying domestic pressure to Putin That would make sense too. As long as Ukraine is still holding that territory when those negotiations are going on. Are there any estimates on when those negotiations could happen and if Ukraine will still be in control of Kursk by then?
c) provide a greater buffer for air-defense to counter inbound artillery and missiles
That true but only in the areas directly near Kursk. Is it likely that this can be repeated along the rest of the battle lines?
Your intuition on what Ukraine is hoping to achieve seems reasonable but I don’t know if it’s likely to work out that way.
The whole thing makes me think back to the “Ukrainian counteroffensive” from last year. At the time, US advisors were telling them to do a fast combined arms assault on some place like Mariupol, instead of dithering around, letting the Russians build a ton of defenses and then smashing all the fancy US equipment against said defenses. This assault seems almost like what that counteroffensive should have been. I say “almost” because I’m puzzled about the target. Controlling Mariupol would have cut off the entire western half of the Russian assault. They’d have no supplies and nowhere to run to besides going for a swim. Kursk? The benefits are less obvious.
