President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday (August 22) said Ukrainian troops continue to capture territory and Russian soldiers in Russia’s Kursk Oblast since the launch of Ukraine’s surprise incursion into the region more than two weeks ago. Russia on its part said that it had foiled a Ukrainian attempt to seize land in the neighbouring Bryansk Oblast, about 240 km away from the site of the incursion into Kursk. Ukraine’s attack in Kursk, which began early on August 6, came after months of steady gains by Russia on the battlefield. Many experts see the incursion as a major moment in the war that is now in its third year — a success that has helped Kyiv change the narrative that had taken root following its losses and setbacks suffered elsewhere. What was the Ukrainian objective behind the Kursk incursion? President Zelenskyy and the commander-in-chief of Ukrainian forces Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi have not explained their reasons for going deep inside Russia. However, observers have listed three probable objectives of the incursion. A BARGAINING CHIP: Ukraine wants to use the captured territory as a bargaining chip for any future negotiation with Russia. If Donald Trump returns to the White House early next year, he could force Kyiv to negotiate by withdrawing American military-technical assistance. “The Ukrainian government wants to make sure that if it has to enter that process, it has things that Russia wants to trade for concessions,” Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, London, wrote in The Guardian. TO BOOST MORALE: It has been suggested that Ukraine wanted to boost the morale of its people and troops after failing to stop the Russian advance in the east. The operation was intended to signal that even with its dwindling resources, the Ukrainian military can carry out a successful offensive. Ukraine also wanted to display to the West that helping it with arms and funds is not yet a lost cause. BATTLEFIELD TACTIC: The incursion could be a tactic to force Russia to divert its forces from the hottest battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where they are coming close to fulfilling their goal of capturing all of the Donetsk region. Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Foreign Policy, “Ukraine likely holds that, at a bare minimum, this operation will force the Russian military to deploy a much larger force to counter their offensive, thereby sapping their operations in Donetsk.” What is the status of the Kursk incursion? The attack, which has resulted in one of the biggest exchanges of territory since the first month of the war in 2022, caught President Vladimir Putin off-guard. On August 20, Col Gen Syrskyi claimed that Ukraine has taken control of almost 1,300 sq km of Russian territory. If accurate, this would mean Ukraine has already captured more land since the beginning of the attack on August 6 than Russia has captured in Ukraine over the last eight months. The operation has forced Russia to evacuate nearly 200,000 people from the region. Ukraine has reportedly captured hundreds of Russian conscripts, and has destroyed several bridges over the Seym river, cutting off a key Russian logistics base in Glushkovo from the frontline forces. Lt Gen Ben Hodges, who led US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, told Britain’s Times Radio that Ukraine’s ability to “neutralise Russian drones by creating.some sort of a counter-drone bubble” had helped. What happens now? It is too early to predict if Ukraine will be able to hold on its gains. The Ukrainian army is suffering from a shortage of manpower, and it pulled reserve troops from other battle frontlines such as in Donetsk and Kharkiv to commit them to the new axis. In the coming weeks, its troops in Kursk could find themselves overextended, and be forced to retreat. Also, Russia has not so far diverted its forces from the Donetsk region. On August 19, Russian forces captured nearly all of the town of Niu-York, entered nearby Toretsk, and encroached on the logistics hub of Pokrovsk, according to a report by the Financial Times. Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, a Poland-based group that tracks the war, told the Financial Times that with most of its reserve forces committed to Kursk, Ukraine would struggle to fill defensive gaps and counter various Russian threats. An Indian strategic affairs expert on Russia told The Indian Express that Ukraine may have made a mistake in going deep into Kursk. If Russia does not come to the negotiation table soon, and if Western allies fail to supply more arms and ammunition to Ukraine, the incursion could turn out to be “military suicide”, the expert said.
