Ukrainian Kursk gamble doesn’t pay off | Opinion

Volodymyr Zelensky is a lonely man these days.

The last time the Ukrainian president toured Western capitals, where he met the president Joe Biden in late September and several European heads of state in October, yielded few new security commitments from its foreign backers. Kiev’s request to use Western-made missiles against targets deep inside Russia remains on hold. Zelenskys the so-called ‘victory plan’ hasn’t impressed anyone – it’s less a “plan” and more a wish list of weapons that Ukrainian officials have put forward every week for the past two and a half years.

The battlefield doesn’t look great for the Ukrainians either. Although the Russian military continues to face problems, it was reportedly September the deadliest month since the beginning of the war – the offensive in Donetsk is breaking down Ukrainian defensive positions. Russian president Vladimir Putin is committed to conquering the Donbas region and is more than willing to sacrifice many young Russian men to do so. The strategy, however cruel, appears to be working, albeit more slowly than Putin would like. In early October the Russian army attacked Vuhledar captured after a months-long offensive there; this week, they took Selydove with thema small town on the road to the logistics hub Pokrovsk.

The Ukrainian offensive in August in Russia’s Kursk region was supposed to prevent some of this, or at least force the Kremlin to make some tough decisions about where to deploy its troops and resources. Zelenskiy’s decision surprised the United States, its largest military backer, and caused divisions within the Ukrainian military establishment. According to a September report in Politico Europe, Valery Zaluzhny, Kiev’s top military commander during the first two years of the war, objected because he felt the plan had not been thought out well enough. However, Zelensky viewed the raid as a way to turn the tables after a year of heavy losses.

However, the real purpose of the Kursk operation was a mystery. There was never a unified theory on the matter. When Zelensky talked about it, he gave several reasons for launching it. First of all, it was about push back the Russians from Ukraine’s northern border to ensure that the Sumy region is not subjected to Russian missile attacks every day. Then it was about capturing Russian soldiers and using them as leverage to force the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Then Zelensky talked about how occupying parts of Kursk would increase Kiev’s power at the negotiating table when Putin finally decided to engage in serious diplomacy.

Whatever the plan was, the Kursk offensive was a gamble. The operation could go brilliantly, once again putting the Russian military at a disadvantage and forcing Putin’s inner circle to reconsider its war strategy. Or it could prove counterproductive, exacerbating Ukraine’s manpower problem and further delaying negotiations to end the war.

Unfortunately, more than two months later, the Ukrainian Kursk Gambit is moving closer to the second scenario.

After a truly pathetic few weeks, the Russians regrouped – or at least were sufficiently regrouped. A Russian counteroffensive in Kursk began about a month after Ukraine’s first foray into the region. While it is true, the Ukrainians remain entrenched in some areas, the Russians have retaken about half the country lost before. It is difficult to determine the size of the Ukrainian casualties, but it is safe to assume that they are significant, given the number of regulations the Russians have imposed on Ukrainian positions (one can suspect the same about the Russian casualties, by the way).

But more important than the reality on the ground is how incorrect the Ukrainian government’s calculations have proven to be.

One of Kiev’s main assumptions was that pressuring the Russians on its own soil would embarrass Putin enough to cause him to redeploy tens of thousands of troops from eastern Ukraine back to the home front. This, in turn, would reduce the pressure faced by Ukrainian forces in Donetsk. Yet that has turned out to be a rosy scenario; Putin has indeed done that redeployed troops of Ukraine to strengthen the defenses in Kursk, but not from the places in Donetsk that the Ukrainians hoped for. The front line in Donetsk is even more active today than before the Kursk offensive began in August, and the Russians now control more territory in this Ukrainian province than in the summer.

Is Putin Closer to Discussing a Solution to the War? The Ukrainians hoped that would be the case. But preliminary talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials on halting attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure were blown up at the time Zelensky ordered the Kursk offensive. Predictably, Putin saw the raid as a stab in the back and pulled the plug, with Moscow labeling the Ukrainian offensive as an escalation. This should not have come as a surprise to Zelensky or the people who advised him; Whenever Putin was pressured, he responded by raising the bar rather than submitting. Zelensky, perhaps realizing his initial mistake, try it now to get the discussions back on track.

It’s always easy to quarterback a war from thousands of miles away on a Monday morning. But it doesn’t take much foresight to see how the Ukrainian bet on Kursk could go disastrously wrong.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author.