On Tuesday, Aug. 13, the Armed Forces of Ukraine said it now controls around 386 square miles in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, an area roughly the size of Indianapolis. This region includes nearly 30 different towns or settlements and is home to hundreds of thousands of Russians, many of whom are now fleeing.
Previously, Kyiv took the territory after sending troops, tanks, drones and other equipment across the border from Sumy Oblast in northern Ukraine.
“Firstly, Russia did not expect this,” Pavel Luzin, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and an expert on Russian affairs, said. Luzin added Moscow is being forced to redistribute its military forces from other parts of the frontline and its reserves to Kursk to stop the Ukrainian advance.
A week after Ukraine’s initial incursion, Russian troops finally launched a coordinated strike using artillery and missiles on Ukrainian forces in Kursk. The fight to control the territory is ongoing.
“That means that the Russian authoritarian regime is not so strong,” Luzin said. “And the war, the ongoing war, is probably the only thing which still consolidates this regime.”
According to Luzin, Ukraine’s incursion into Russia reveals several weaknesses. He pointed out Russia’s institutions of political power are highly dysfunctional. Under the Putin regime, Luzin said no one acts without orders from above.
“They are afraid,” Luzin said. “And this is a result of a quarter-century of the new Russian authoritarianism. The current situation is very different from the Soviet times. [In] the Soviet military mayors, colonels, generals [knew their] places, their positions. Whether or not it was Afghanistan, Angola, Vietnam or many other places in this world where the Soviet military were active, even if they denied this activity, doesn’t matter. These people [knew they] must act by themselves. They must be smart enough, clever enough and so on.”
In addition to the dysfunction within Russia’s ranks, Luzin pointed out the incursion highlights Moscow’s inaccurate method of gathering battlefield information.
“These people from the bottom level to up, they provide the information about the reality, but they try to provide the information which will not lead to punishment against them,” Luzin said, accusing Russia’s soldiers on the frontlines of painting a rosier picture for their commanding officers than what might actually exist.
Lastly, Luzin said Ukraine’s incursion exposes Russia’s hollow threats about using nuclear weapons.
“They mentioned nuclear weapons hundreds of times during the last 10 years,” Luzin said. “Hundreds of times. Now they are silent. So when reality comes, the Russian doctrine does not work. And that means if Russia will continue to pose a threat to NATO, to the Baltic states, the Baltic members of NATO and so on, that means NATO army can act against Russia on the Russian territory.”
Some NATO nations previously indicated they may send troops to Ukraine in a training capacity. As of publish time, there are no further plans by any NATO nation to attack Russia on Russian territory.
In Kursk, the reasoning behind the invasion remains unclear. The motive for the attack remains unclear. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said the country doesn’t plan to hold the territory its forces captured. Kyiv did not inform Washington or its European allies about the attack beforehand.
“There can be no sustainable peace with Russia,” Elena Davlikanova, a fellow at CEPA, said. “Undemocratic Russia will always be a threat to the Western alliance, and we should expect either a hot war or a cold war.”
Straight Arrow News spoke to Davlikanova before Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk. She talked about the long-term security agreements Ukraine was signing with around 20 nations. At the time, she said Ukraine viewed the agreements as a step in the right direction, but not as effective as NATO membership.
“Since 2022, our Western allies have been very creative in looking for ways to ensure Ukraine’s security, and at the same time not offering NATO membership,” Davlikanova said. “So, we don’t feel safe. We don’t feel relieved.”
“Even these bilateral agreements — in the title of the agreements, it doesn’t say ‘security guarantees,’” Davlikanova continued. “It says these are agreements on cooperation in security and long-term support for Ukraine.”
If Ukraine did not feel safe even with some signed security cooperation agreements in place, perhaps that is why it chose to attack Kursk, potentially securing a few more bargaining chips ahead of possible peace talks. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that was the reasoning behind Ukraine’s bold move. Whether it will be enough to turn the tide of the war remains to be seen.
Regardless of how things play out on the battlefield, Davlikanova believes the only way to truly topple the Russian regime is to gut its economy.
“Even though their economy is suffering, it doesn’t suffer as much as it should suffer,” Davlikanova said. “And there are thousands of Western companies that continue working in Russia, and they continue creating all these different economic processes, supporting the Russian economy indirectly. So I think that the answer to sustainable peace is Russia’s economic decline, and if we do everything to achieve that, then we will be able to more or less coexist in a peaceful format. Just like we did back in the 1990s.”
