It's been a little more than a month since Ukraine's military launched a surprise offensive into Russian territory near the city of Kursk. What started as an incursion designed to relieve pressure on Ukraine's Eastern front has become a major military engagement involving thousands of troops and at least two brigades of Ukrainian armor.
The Russian military has been slow to respond to the offensive. At the same time, Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine continue their methodical and bloody advance in the Donbas region. It doesn't appear that Russian President Vladimir Putin will transfer troops westward to deal with the Ukrainian offensive, dealing a blow to Ukraine's strategic objectives with the incursion.
One unintended consequence of Ukraine's offensive has been the effect on Russia's elites. Putin's war narrative has been blown up by Ukraine's bold attack, giving the lie to the Russian president's confident assertions that Ukraine was finished and the war might be over by next summer. According to both the British and American intelligence chiefs, this has triggered some doubts about the wisdom of the war from Putin's cronies and advisors.
MI6 chief Richard Moore and CIA director Bill Burns made a historic joint appearance at a London conference sponsored by the Financial Times. Burns said the Kursk offensive was "a significant tactical achievement” that had raised morale and exposed Russia’s weaknesses. It has “raised questions . . . across the Russian elite about where is this all headed,” he said.
Moore said raising questions did not mean that Putin was losing his grip on power. Moore said it would be wrong to “confuse a tight grip on power with a stable grip,” especially as the Kursk incursion had “brought the war home to ordinary Russians.”
Both also said it would be wrong to take Putin’s threats of nuclear escalation lightly but that the west should not be unnecessarily intimidated. “Putin is a bully and is going to continue sabre-rattling from time to time,” Burns said.
Asked whether Iran had shipped short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, Burns said that doing so would “mark a dramatic escalation”.
Moore said that if Russia did use Iranian missiles in Ukraine, alongside the drones that Tehran had already supplied, it would be “very obvious”
The commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, claims the strategy of the Kursk offensive is working. He told CNN that the Kursk operation “reduced the threat of an enemy offensive” and that Russia was preparing a major offensive in the region with tens of thousands of troops.
Syrskyi also claims that the Kursk operation had stymied the Russian advance in Eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
“Over the last six days the enemy hasn’t advanced a single meter in the Pokrovsk direction. In other words, our strategy is working,” he said. “We’ve taken away their ability to maneuver and to deploy their reinforcement forces from other directions … and this weakening has definitely been felt in other areas.”
On the other hand, Moscow claims to have taken a strategic crossroads just 7 miles from Pokrovsk.
Russia's defence ministry said its forces had taken the town of Novohrodivka, which lies 12 km (7 miles) from Pokrovsk, an important rail and road hub for Ukrainian forces in the area. The town had a population of 14,000 before the war.
Yuri Podolyaka, an influential Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger, published maps showing Russian forces attacking beyond Novohrodivka in at least two places less than 7 km (4 miles) from Pokrovsk.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military, in a late afternoon report, described the situation as "tense" throughout the Pokrovsk sector and said "fierce battles" gripped areas around several towns, including Novohrodivka.
"So far, the enemy has carried out 23 assaults on Ukrainian positions," the report said. Battles are going on in six locations."
So maybe things aren't going quite as well in Donbas as the Ukrainians would have us believe. Or perhaps Russia is exaggerating its gains. What we know for sure is that the Kursk offensive has reinvigorated Ukraine's troops and brought a ray of light to Ukraine's civilians, who are going to have to endure a long, dark winter.
