Was Ukraine’s dangerous attack on Russia’s Kursk region worth it?

• Ukraine launched a dangerous offensive against Russia last year, seizing part of the territory in Kursk.
• Ukraine was able to attack and take the initiative, but the impact was not felt at home.
• War experts said the measure is likely to be valid, but it remains to be seen whether this is true.

Ukraine’s ambitious advance into Russia’s Kursk region last summer was a tremendous risk.

Whether the gamble was ultimately worth it is something military historians will likely debate at length. For Ukraine, there have been some signs that it may double down with a new offensive.

There were costs, but the Kursk offensive offered the Ukrainians a chance to break away from the slow, brutal, and austere defense situation at home and go on the offensive, as well as to divert Russian resources. And there is still the possibility that this will help Kiev in possible peace talks.

“It’s hard to say until everything works, but I would say it was a good move,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of Ukraine’s actions in Kursk in recent months. .

Ukraine’s Kursk operation was a chance to change the status quo

Ukraine’s Kursk operation came as a surprise to observers of the war, Ukraine’s international partners, Russian soldiers guarding the country’s borders and even many of Kiev’s troops.

Ukraine said it was trying to create a buffer zone, strain Russian military resources and secure land and prisoners for negotiations with Moscow.

Ukraine is also likely to aim to boost the morale of its fatigued forces, as well as signal strength to Western countries that may be weary of providing support.

The breakthrough also gave him a shot at seizing the initiative and taking the fight to Russian soil. Taking the initiative has long been understood as the key to winning wars.

Without it, as in chess, “you’re constantly on the defensive, your opponent boxes you into a corner,” said George Barros, a war expert at the Institute for the Study of War.

There is a risk that sooner or later you will be left with “a series of bad decisions that you would rather not make,” he said. Letting your opponent hold the initiative in a fight is “how you end up losing.”

Ukraine also proved that it had more cards to play in this war.

Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander for the United Kingdom’s joint chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear forces, highlighted the use of drones in Ukraine and Ukraine’s effective use of armored maneuver warfare.

But those maneuvers were costly.

The reported tank losses suggest that the fighting at Kursk “has chewed up quite a large chunk” of Ukrainian armor from Western partner countries, said Matthew Savill, a former intelligence analyst at the UK Ministry of Defense who now is a military strategy expert at the Royal United Services Institute.

This limits Ukraine’s flexibility and ability to increase forces elsewhere.

There is no guarantee, however, that Ukraine would have been able to effectively use the tanks back on its soil, where intense fighting and dense drone cover have limited their use. Michael Bohnert, a war expert at the RAND Corporation, said that taking the tanks to Kursk may have been the most optimal way to use them.

The Ukrainian army was trying to ease the pressure on the front

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initial response was slow, and he did not turn to the military for a fix, instead relying on a mix of other security groups. As Russia eventually stepped up its efforts to dislodge Ukrainian offensive troops, thousands of North Korean troops arrived to fight for Russia.

Russia’s delayed and erratic response meant that Ukraine could seize more territory and prepare better defenses, but it also meant that hopes of drawing significant numbers of Russian troops away from the Ukrainian front lines were not fully realized. .

Russia did not have to dramatically scale back its efforts in Ukraine in response to Kursk, and its military has been on the move, advancing throughout the fall.

And Ukraine had to pull troops from the front lines home for Kursk, potentially complicating its defenses. It remains unclear whether it was better for Ukraine to move its forces to Kursk or defend the lines at home.

But there were some good effects for Ukraine on its soil.

The Ukrainian moves “fundamentally disrupted Russian war plans,” Barros said, “because the forces and plans presupposing their availability were then consumed and taken over by the newly established requirement of defending Kursk and driving the Ukrainians out of Kursk.”

The head of Ukraine’s armed forces said in December that he had no choice but to attack Kursk, arguing that he needed to reduce pressure on the fronts in Ukraine and stop Russia from opening a new front in Ukraine’s Sumy region.

He said he reduced the intensity of Russia’s attacks across Ukraine, except in Pokrovsk and Kurakhevo, areas where the Russians are advancing.

It has been an uphill struggle for Ukraine to hold ground inside Russia

Much less information is emerging from Kursk than from the fighting inside Ukraine, but Russian casualties have increased since August, according to British intelligence citing the Ukrainian military. Ukraine says Russia lost over 38,000 troops and more than 1,000 pieces of equipment at Kursk.

Bohnert said Kursk had been “very costly from the Russian perspective”. He said the losses Russia appears to be conceding there are staggering.

But Russia has increasingly demonstrated that it is willing to tolerate heavy losses, defeating Ukraine with its largest army in a war of attrition.

Ukraine, at the height of its incursion into Russia, held about 500 square miles of territory in Kursk. But Russia seems to have taken about half of that, and it’s not clear what Ukraine’s recent actions might accomplish there.

War experts told BI that the Ukrainians may have given up at least some of them willingly, less chained to holding onto every inch of territory than in their own country. De Bretton-Gordon said Ukraine still has significant territory that could be useful to the country if an end to the war hinges on negotiations — something President-elect Donald Trump has pushed for.

“Whoever holds Kursk for sure in the new year will be in the box for any ceasefire negotiations,” de Bretton-Gordon said, adding that he largely sees Ukraine’s decision to advance on Russia’s Kursk as a ” positive”.

Beyond serving as a bargaining chip, Kursk also helped to dispel the idea that the war was hopelessly deadlocked. It also showed that surprise and big profits were possible for Ukraine.

“If enough Western officials and politicians believe it’s a hopeless stalemate, it can’t be changed, then their appetite to continue supporting Ukraine will erode over time. That’s Russian strategy in its entirety,” Barros said.

Although some Western countries eventually gave Kiev new permission to use their weapons to strike Russia, supporting Ukrainian operations, Kursk did not result in a major increase in aid from Ukraine’s partners, and it is unclear whether it had any effect. important in the long run. thinking.

The push into Russia was a shock moment and a morale booster, but it has not produced the results Kiev had hoped for and may not.

Rating of gambling of Ukraine in Kursk

So was Ukraine’s Kursk operation worth it? This question is still up for debate.

Based on his knowledge of Ukraine at the time of the attack and what has happened since then, Cancian said he would say, “Yes, it was the right thing to do.”

Barros said that without Kursk, “you would have the Russians leaning into this heavy-handed style of warfare, where they can continue to launch attacks.” And Ukraine would have leaned into the way Russia wanted to fight.

Savill said he was “wary of criticizing him from a thousand miles away when they’re fighting the existential war and I’m not”.

“Choosing to do it was brave,” he said. “It put the Russians on their toes temporarily. It showed something of what well-resourced Ukrainian forces could do if they identified a weak point.” But he also said the decision to keep Kursk so long after that first big breakthrough “may turn out to have been a mistake.”

Barros said the question of whether Kursk is worth it is a “complex question,” since “we’re looking at a living patient.” But in the end, he said, “it’s a good thing that the Ukrainians sought to counter the initiative and impose problems on the Russians.”