Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Has Failed

The August Offensive

When the Armed Forces of Ukraine entered Kursk Oblast in August 2024, it was always destined to be a high stakes operation. Ukrainian planners enacted the operation knowing that the chances of success were slim but clearly judged the potential payoff worth the risk.

As the months have passed and the situation has developed, I believe we can accurately assess the impact of the operation and declare that it has failed to achieve its primary objectives.?

To understand why this is, we need to distinguish between the tactical and the strategic. Strategy is the overall grand plan which belligerent nations follow with the aim of overall victory in their war. Tactical is the day-to-day methodology by which they fight the war.?

So, for instance, Russia’s strategy is to leverage its advantage in manpower and production capacity to methodically “deconstruct” the Ukrainian military and state by attrition. This was explicitly stated by Putin when he cited “demilitarisation” as a key war objective. The tactics by which this is done is by artillery dominance on the ground and continuous aerial bombardments against infrastructure critical to the functioning of the Ukrainian state with the aim of precipitating a collapse.?

Ukraine’s strategy has been to impose such immense costs upon the Kremlin, both in economic and manpower terms that Putin is forced to sue for peace. Kyiv has cycled through a variety of tactics to do this, including beseeching its sponsors to throttle Russian exports, attacking oil and gas production facilities with drones and enacting grueling ground defence against Russian troops to bleed the attacking force out.?

From a tactical perspective, the Kursk operation was brilliant. The Ukrainians massed under cover of foliage in the Sumy region and executed an effective operation to breach the border and achieved their primary tactical goals in record time. The issue, as I want to show, is that even the best tactically executed operations can fail to shift the overall strategic picture of a conflict.?

Russia’s Initial Failure

Firstly, it is worth saying why the initial assault was so effective. After months of grueling attritional conflict in which the map barely changed, Ukraine burst into Kursk Oblast and painted a small but notable pocket of Russia blue. Kyiv achieved this because their forces seized the element of surprise.?

How they were able to do this has confused analysts. The Russians have highly capable Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (known as ISR) capabilities and reports suggest that their military analysts flagged the threat of the Ukrainian military gathering multiple times to their superiors but were ignored.?

This has prompted some to argue that the entire Kursk offensive was a devious trap by the Kremlin to lure Ukrainian forces away from the primary battlefield so they could be trapped in an isolated pocket of Russia and destroyed by artillery.?

This explanation does not fit the reality. People have a tendency to attribute grand plans and schemes to what can adequately be explained by incompetence. The truth is far more mundane; militaries and intelligence organisations are made up of people, and people make mistakes.?

We’ve seen plenty of recent examples of this phenomenon.? Israel’s failure to prevent Hamas’ attack into her territory despite ample warnings from multiple parties, or Assad’s inability to stop the HTS and SNA assault out of Idlib province despite the same.?

So when Kursk was breached, it was defended by a mere skeleton force of young conscripts and Rosgvardia (essentially armed police) units which had no chance against the force that Ukraine had assembled, which was composed of highly trained and battle hardened veterans. Ofcourse, the Ukrainians were able to tear through what resistance they encountered.

The Objectives

Despite this initial success, I still believe the operation has strategically failed. To understand why, we need to look at the objectives of the operation and analyse them in turn. I believe they are as follows; force the Kremlin to deploy troops away from the Donbas, gain leverage in future negotiations, increase costs on the Kremlin and Russian public, and extract more support from sponsors.?

Force the Kremlin to redeploy their forces from Donbas

Clauswitz wrote that to win a war, one must target the centre of gravity of an opponent. This is understood as the leverage point after which an enemy cannot sustain the capacity to fight. The centre of gravity of this war is now the Donbas, the region of eastern Ukraine composed of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.?

The reason for this is that it is the most fortified area of the country and lends itself well to defence. Geographically, the majority of Ukraine is flat steppe and easy prey for a mechanised force to sweep through but Donbas is highly urbanised and acts as a barrier to an attacking force. Following the Maidan revolution and the start of Kiev's war against Russian-funding separatists, Ukraine invested heavily in the construction of a ring of fortifications and trenches and other defensive infrastructure throughout the region and the men deployed throughout the region became Ukraine’s most battle hardened veterans.?

Since 2022, Russia has been slowly chewing through Ukrainian defence lines in Donbas. They have effectively conquered Luhansk and have pushed Ukrainian defenders into the last third of Donetsk. If the current strategic dynamic is sustained, Russia will conquer the Donbas eventually and the Ukrainian military will be pushed onto the steppe behind it from which they will struggle to hold ground due to having no defensive terrain to anchor their defence to.?

Therefore, Kyiv needed to roll the dice with a plan which would force the Kremlin to cease their focus on Donbas and they did this by attacking Russia proper. This is entirely rational. One would expect the Kremlin to prioritise Russian land over Ukrainian territory. The fact that Kursk has such a symbolic importance in Russian martial tradition, as the site of the great tank battle of Kursk in 1943 probably also played into this calculation.

The issue is, the Russians did not take the bait.?

Instead, the Russians initially took advantage of the thinning of Ukrainian lines and expedited their conquest of Donbas. In the proceeding months since the start of the Kursk attack, Russian movements further into Ukraine increased at a rate not seen since the start of the war, with General Sysky, commander of Ukrainian forces admitting as much.?

Moscow has shown that it places a higher priority on securing the last portion of Donbas that it does not control than it does on recovering Russian territory . The reason for this is simply to understand; from a strategic point of view, Donbas, especially Donetsk, is far more important than Kursk.?

Control over Donbas gives Russia access to the Azov Sea and allows the creation of military infrastructure that connects with Crimea via Zaporizhzhya, thus allowing Moscow to resupply their most important naval and military base. Additionally, Donbas is highly mineral rich and heavily populated. Compared to this, Kursk is a rural and sparsely inhabited region with limited strategic value.

Instead, Moscow has opted to respond by using forces from regions which are non critical to the war effort and would not disrupt their offensive in Donbas. This has included withdrawing limited forces from areas as diverse as Kaliningrad in northern Europe, Russian aligned states in Africa, and Kherson in southern Ukraine, an ossified part of the frontline where Russian forces are protected from Ukrainian attack by the River Dnieper. All this meant that when Mosow’s counter-attack did come, it was composed of troops from areas of secondary strategic importance.?

In Donbas, Ukrainian defenders have been deprived of reinforcements and ammunition as Kyiv has prioritised the Kursk offensive, allowing the Russia military to take advantage of this and advance at a faster rate.?

Gain Leverage in Future Negotiations?

Another potential objective that has been touted is that Kyiv intends to use Kursk as a card in future negotiations.?

I’ve always been suspicious of this as a potential goal of the operation for several reasons. The first being that using this land as leverage would require holding it. It’s easy to colour in areas of the map, but it is less easy to hold that land when you’re facing a more powerful adversary and you don’t know when these negotiations are actually going to occur. This is the perfect recipe to get your soldiers stuck in a quagmire defending isolated ground. It is also highly dangerous because it could encourage the Russians to slow down the negotiation process while they commit to seizing the remainder of Donbas then slowly pivoting to neutralising Ukrainian troops in the Kursk area to mitigate any advantage in that process.?

Again, the relative lack of importance of Kursk plays against this objective. Even if Ukraine holds the Kursk pocket into perpetuity (unlikely), the Kremlin is not going to surrender the areas of Ukraine it has conquered for some isolated barely populated piece of farmland.?

Perhaps, Kyiv expects to trade the Kursk pocket for gains Russia considers less important, for instance, the small strip of land that Russian troops occupy northeast of Kharkiv city. That would make sense but I’m doubtful as this small strip allows the Russian military to threaten Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, with artillery fire and is thus a useful card for Moscow to use in negotiation.?

Gain more support from sponsors

Ukraine’s strategic issue is that it cannot match Russian military and industrial power and has thus been dependent upon aid, both financial and military, from sponsors in the West, primarily the United States.?

The problem in relying upon outside backers is the different interests at play. Ukraine rationally wants to liberate her territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, which is essential to ensure the sea-trade which makes up such a large portion of her economy cannot be blocked off by the Russian Black Sea Fleet.?

The United States, however, cares more about weakening Russia than it does about ensuring full Ukrainian unification. The US also wants to ensure that the conflict is contained within Ukraine, lest the war spread onto a global level and become uncontrollable. Therefore, Washington is attempting to calibrate its support of Ukraine by slowly introducing new weapons and increased capability in a methodical manner to prevent Ukraine falling but prevent total outbreak of hostilities between the larger powers. The other problem with this is it requires you to show you are still useful to your supporters and if Ukraine continues to lose militarily, western backers will judge the financial and military support as a poor investment and pull the plug. To those unfamiliar with geopolitics, it sounds callous (and it is), but it is the reality.??

Kyiv is aware of this and knows how fickle western support really is. By breaking into Kursk, the Ukrainians showed that they could still fight and achieve victories. The offensive also had the benefit of crossing Putin’s “red lines,” which have deterred western escalations previously. In this vein, the offensive was the natural evolution of Ukrainian tactics of continually breaching Russian these supposed red lines to demonstrate to their sponsors that there was nothing to fear from the potential of Russian retaliation.??

The United States and her allies have now approved the use of long-range strike capability into Russia, which has been a continuous Ukrainian demand but overall there has been very little change in the broader western strategy of slow supply of weaponry and financial support.

I believe an under-discussed reason for this is Ukraine’s position in Washington’s list of geopolitical priorities. The United States is a global hegemon and must spread her resources to defend its interests and allies in various regions.?

Since the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, Ukraine has been forced to compete with Israel for funding. For various reasons, including the presence of hydrocarbons and two major trade routes, the Suez Canal and Strait of Hormuz, the US naturally prioritises the Middle East over Eastern Europe. Additionally, Washington must prepare for the possibility of a conflict with China over Taiwan and the South China Sea, both of which are vital for the US’ economy. Against these concerns, Ukraine is gradually falling down the list of priorities. Compare this to Russia, which can afford to concentrate and expend her resources in a single conflict zone.?

This demonstrates the bind the Ukrainians are in. Kyiv has done nothing wrong per se but is facing the consequences of relying on external sponsors for assistance. Now with the incoming Trump administration, Zelensky is marketing his country to the US as a vital hub for critical metals extraction to keep Washington on side and has launched a renewed offensive into Kursk to time well with the inauguration of the returning president.?

The goal of this offensive will be to hold and expand control over Russian territory until the new administration is in power and potential negotiations are launched. However, as said, I do not think this will change the strategic picture for Ukraine and could worsen the overall situation if Kursk becomes an attritional sink into which already limited Ukrainian military resources are being expended for very little gain.?

Increase costs on the Russian public and government and boost Ukrainian morale

The final major objective, which Zelensky has been explicit about, is the need to increase costs upon the Russian government and people more generally. The Ukrainians hope that when the costs become too much to bear for his public, Putin will be removed, either via a popular Maidan style revolt or an internal palace coup.?

The logic is not irrational and has guided both the broader strategy towards Putin, both in the creation of the sanctions regime, and in Ukrainian strikes against Russian infrastructure. The issue is that Putin has been relatively successful in buttressing his country from the effects of the war, with the few periods of panic which the war has generated, such as Pregozhin’s mutiny in June 2023, or the enactment of partial conscription in September 2022 largely dissipating in the following months and the situation for the Kremlin stabilising.?

Seeing this repeated ability for the Kremlin to regain narrative control, Kyiv became frustrated and opted for a strike which could not be ignored by the Russian people. To do this, Ukraine surged into Russian territory but was limited in what areas it could attack into, with Belgorod being highly defended and other more populous regions of Russia being naturally protected by the country’s immense size, therefore Kursk was judged to be the only option.?

This appears to have worked at first. Images of Russian civilians being evacuated from the region and the total inability of the military to prevent the attack once again knocked Putin’s image. What followed was the typical and unceasing headlines from the western media about how Putin was “humiliated,” “embarrassed,” “on limited time.” This has been a constant trend throughout the war. The Ukrainians gain a notable victory and we’re subjected to constant headlines proclaiming Putin’s imminent demise, then the situation returns to the status quo of the Russians slowly diminishing Ukrainian resistance.?

A weakness that Ukraine has identified, however, and is seeking to exploit is the presence of conscripts in Kursk. Russian law forbids the deployment of conscripts on foreign territory (although many have been deployed to Ukraine as the result of corrupt or incompetent officers). However, conscripts made up a significant number of the defending forces in Kursk and there is reliable evidence to suggest that the Ukrainians captured a not insignificant number of them.?

I believe one of the reasons the Ukrainians used veteran soldiers was to inflict heavy casualties upon these conscripts and damage Russian public confidence due to these high death rates. While Russia has lost a lot of soldiers in the war, the majority of these deaths have been contract volunteers who have willingly signed up to fight and their deaths do not generate the same public anger as injuries and death inflicted against young poorly trained conscripts who were forced into fighting. This is a tactic which is carefully calibrated to get to the psyche of the Russian public; it was the death of young conscripts in Afghanistan and Chechnya which severely undermined Russia’s ability to persecute these wars and Ukraine appears to have learned this. Additionally, capturing these young men would represent a boon for the Ukrainians, who have a lot of their own hostages they wish to get back.?

This may explain Putin’s decision to potentially have deployed North Korean auxiliaries to Kursk, knowing as he does that the Russian public will not weep for young foreigners from a stalinist hermit kingdom most Russians are embarrassed to be associated with.?

Ukraine’s Overall Strategic Picture

There is no denying it. The strategic situation for Ukraine is poor. The country enters the new year with a devastated economy, a tired army gradually being pushed out of critical positions in its most important threatre and with an incoming American administration who has made their desire to wrap up the situation clear, and a Europe which appears to be destabilising as reliable allies in Germany, the United Kingdom and France face increased domestic political pressure.?

Zellensky himself has conceded that it is now virtually impossible for Ukraine to retake its captured territories by force. I’ve said before that the likely outcome is a Cyprus situation. Just as in Ukraine, Cyprus was invaded by an aggressive revanchist power with a casus belli based in nationalism and as in this case the Cypriots lacked the military power to fully recover their land by force.

I expect that Ukraine will remain divided between an internationally recognised administration in Kyiv who dream of one day taking back their land, and an unrecognised “Novorossiya” colony governed from Moscow. The rest of the world, even Russian partners such as China, will not officially recognise these conquests because they understand the value of at least paying lip service to the international norm of recognised borders but that won’t stop Moscow steadily and slowly integrating the captured territories.

1. Title map from the Institute for the Study of War depicting the initial August offensive into Kursk Oblast.