Can Ukraine’s Kursk offensive help Kyiv achieve strategic dividend?

The bold Ukrainian ground offensive beginning on August 6 into the Southern Kursk region of Russia is an operation that took everyone by surprise not only due to its audacity but also in the manner in which it was executed and in the progress it has made. Ukraine, as of date, is occupying a substantial piece of Russian territory, reportedly 1,150 sq km, which marks the first time that foreign troops have occupied Russian territory since World War II.

As per the latest reports, Ukraine has destroyed a strategically important bridge over the Seym River, which Russia feels has been destroyed by using US rockets, as Ukraine continues its incursion. Russian officials have also been quoted as saying the operation near the town of Glushkovo has cut off part of the local district. The surprise cross-border operation has also resulted in more than 120,000 people fleeing to safety.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ invasion of Kursk Oblast, conceived, planned, and executed in utmost secrecy, has transformed the narrative of the war. Instead of the news about incremental Russian progress, in a war of attrition in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Armed Forces decided to take the battle into the enemy’s territory.

Possible Intention

Having carried out a successful execution, Ukraine now has several options: it can try to hold on to the territory it has seized, it can advance deeper into Russia, retreat to more defensible positions inside Russia, or it can withdraw back into Ukraine having exploited a vulnerability. Each one of these options would have been war-gamed and deliberated upon keeping Ukraine’s military capabilities, Russian reactions, and the intent of the operation in mind.

The best-case scenario for Ukraine is that its units dig in on a tactically advantageous defensive line, and Russia, while being compelled to retake the lost ground, suffers inordinate losses in trying to push them back, thereby degrading their capabilities.

It is difficult to know, at this point, Ukraine’s intent for this operation. Perhaps Ukraine aimed to draw in Russian ground troops away from the frontlines, thereby weakening their offensive. Ukrainians would then seize upon this weakness to recapture some of their lost territory there.

They would have also wanted to divert Russian artillery and other precision weapons and force multipliers northward, beyond the range of Ukraine’s Sumy region. Another aim could be to capture Russian territory, which could be used for bargaining with captured Ukrainian territory by the Russians once negotiations for a ceasefire begin. In fact, President Zelenskyy has called the captured territories an exchange fund, implying they could be swapped for Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow. The aim could also include capturing prisoners in exchange for Ukrainian soldiers held in Russia.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, has said that “Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories” and that one of the key objectives they wanted out of their incursion into Russia was to get Moscow to negotiate “on our own terms”. “In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process,” he wrote on X, adding Kyiv has proven “effective means of coercion”.

Politically, the purpose of the operation is to build leverage ahead of possible negotiations. There is a school of thought that feels that in case Donald Trump wins the US presidency in November, he is likely to force Ukraine to negotiate. The Ukrainian government hence wants to ensure that it has a sizeable chunk of Russian land for potential negotiations.

The other intention could be targeting the Russian leadership, particularly President Putin, by exposing a fundamental weakness in their inability to protect Russian territory and citizens from foreign invasion.

Use of Western Weapons

An issue that has come to the fore is how the incursion might reshape the political and military dynamics of the war due to the implications for the US stance on the use of American-supplied weapons.

The stunning offensive has highlighted one of the riskiest dilemmas for the Western-backed defence of Ukraine, as President Biden has consistently tried to empower Ukraine to push back Russia’s invasion without risking an American escalation with Moscow.

On the other hand, President Vladimir Putin has always tried to portray the conflict as a war between Russia and the West. The Kursk intrusion has now raised the question for the US regarding how Ukraine can use American and NATO weapons systems.

According to a report in the Eurasian Times, the US is withholding authorisation of using ATACMS missiles not because of worries about potential escalation but rather for strategic reasons tied to the limited availability of these long-range weapons. They want Ukraine to prioritise their use in Crimea over strikes in Kursk. This decision aims to maximise the impact of the limited number of ATACMS missiles available.

As per the BBC, while the White House, Pentagon, and State Department won’t officially confirm whether they are being used, it seems overwhelmingly clear that they are, given Ukraine’s reliance on US and NATO weapons systems.

Vladislav Seleznyov, a former spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces’, told Voice of America that US-provided HIMAR rocket launchers had been critical to the advance. Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder has also said, “We assess that they’re within the policy boundaries that we’ve set. Those policies haven’t changed as it relates to, in particular, the use of US weapons.”

But Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh has said, “Again, we don’t support long-range attacks into Russia. These are more for crossfire. I’m not going to put a specific range on it.” While John Healey, the British Defence Secretary, has stated, “We should be proud that British-donated equipment is helping them to defend their country and push back Putin.”

The Kursk offensive has taken the Western dilemma into unexpected territory, literally and figuratively. The ambiguity is therefore unlikely to be cleared.

Russian Options and Reactions

However, as Ukraine moves further into Western Russian territory, Russian forces are equally making gains in Ukraine’s east. On August 16, Russian troops had captured Serhiivka, the latest in a string of towns claimed by Russian troops in recent weeks.

The latest advances have brought the Russians closer to the city of Pokrovsk, which lies north-west of the Russian-held Donetsk region and is a vital logistics hub that sits on a main road for supplies to Ukrainian troops along the eastern front. A message from the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, on August 15 urged people to evacuate the city as Russia was “rapidly approaching the outskirts".

Apart from advancing in eastern Ukraine due to a weakness created as troops for the offensive would necessarily have to be pulled out of the area, Russia has the option of diverting its own troops to prevent further expansions and thereafter carry out the eviction of Ukrainian troops.

The other option that could be exercised by Russia is to bring down sustained fire by precision weapons, long-range vectors, and by air on the Ukrainian troops that have entered Russian territory and thereby degrade and destroy them. This would be in conjunction with the Russian troops fighting the defensive battle.

It is also possible that the stretching of Ukrainian resources will increase opportunities for the Russians to find the seams in Ukraine’s defences and make advances elsewhere, with President Putin being quite willing to absorb the losses presently.

There is, of course, yet another option, and that is the use or threatened use of nuclear weapons targeting the Ukrainian offensive, which would be used on Russian soil and hence would have totally different implications vis-à-vis their being used on Ukrainian soil. This step of course would open up a whole range of ethical questions, and the implications would be grave and would have serious repercussions.

But this war has taught us that philosophy of the use of nuclear weapons, which first used to end World War II and then were used during the Cold War to prevent a war, but nuclear deterrence has been turned on its head in the current conflict by Russia, which has used the threat of nuclear weapons to prosecute a war. Hence, threatening the use of nuclear weapons on its own soil against an invasion may be viewed as being morally correct.

Putin has previously threatened to use “all available means” if Russia’s territorial integrity is threatened. Conversely, is Zelenskyy trying to prove that Putin’s nuclear threats are only rhetoric?

A Historical Lesson

Opening up another front by an offensive action in a vulnerable and sensitive area is not new and has met with both success and failure. History is full of such examples, a famous one being Inchon during the Korean Campaign by General McArthur. In our own context, in 1971, Pakistan, to counter India’s offensive in East Pakistan, attacked various localities on the Western front to include Poonch, Chhamb, Husseniwala, Fazilka, and Longewala. The strong defensive layout and successful counter attacks prevented expansion of gains made initially and eventually degraded and evicted them.

There is also the lesson that the German Army learnt during World War II on the eastern front. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in summer 1941, pressed eastwards, and was pushing on the gates of Moscow by the end of the year. Thereafter, the Red Army struck back.

By early summer 1943, Soviet forces had regained enough ground to create a vulnerable salient : a bulge into the German lines in south-eastern Russia, just north of the Ukrainian cities of Sumy and Kharkiv and quite near today’s Ukrainian Kursk offensive.

On July 4, 1943, the German Army launched a bold, audacious counterstroke, attacking the bulge from the north and the south with the aim of cutting the Soviets off and destroying nearly half a million soldiers. After about a month of heavy fighting—and the largest tank battle in the history of warfare—the German attack on Kursk stalled and failed . The notable commanders involved then included Manstein, Guderian, and Zhukov.

It failed largely because the German Army, at that point in the war, didn’t have the operational depth of forces to sustain their counteroffensive beyond the first few weeks and that troops had to be diverted to France.

Kursk offers many lessons for the Ukrainians today. Even in the boldness of the current incursion, the Ukrainians must be ready to accept that when the spread of their military forces has culminated., they will inevitably reach a point where, if they don’t shift to the defensive at some point, they risk being defeated in detail unless the offensive is suitably strengthened.

The immediate impact of Ukraine’s incursion has been a transformation in the morale of the Ukrainian public and in the narrative among its international partners.

There is, however, a limit to the depth of the Ukrainian offensive. It is well known that Ukraine was suffering from a shortage of troops to rotate and hold the line prior to its operation in Kursk. Now it has pulled together what was available as operational reserves and committed them to a new thrust line. What is important is how far this force can push before it overextends, meaning it will need to dig in soon if the Ukrainians are to hold the ground and avoid getting cut off and destroyed.

The question also remains whether the Kursk incursion will be seen as posing an intolerable threat to Russia and cause Russia to retaliate in a manner that may have serious consequences, or will this be seen as a point in the conflict that can force both sides towards negotiations leading to some sort of agreement.

There is no doubt that Ukraine’s audacity has created a strategic dilemma for Russia. What needs to be determined is the broader impact in the larger context of the Ukrainian War. The truth is that the outcomes and possibilities in war are not inevitable.

The author is a retired Major General of the Indian Army. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.