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Politically, the offensive has had some successes: Ukraine’s rapid advance has embarrassed Russia and turned the tide of a war that had put Kiev’s forces at a disadvantage for months.
Here’s some information on Ukraine’s cross-border actions, which U.S. President Joe Biden said last week created a “real dilemma” for the Russian government.
what happened?
On August 6, Ukrainian troops and armored vehicles entered the Kursk region of western Russia, quickly breaking through Russian defenses and capturing several villages.
The attack, prepared in extreme secrecy, opened a new front in the 30-month war and caught not only Russia off guard: Some Ukrainian soldiers and American officials also said they had no advance notice.
Analysts and Western officials estimate Ukraine deployed about 1,000 troops at the start of the invasion. But military analysts say Ukraine has since committed many more troops to the operation, trying to hold and expand its positions.
How far have Ukrainian troops penetrated into Russia?
Ukraine’s top commander, General Oleksandr Serski, said last week that his forces now control more than 80 Russian settlements in the Kursk region, including the town of Sudja, which has 6,000 residents. His statement could not be independently verified, but analysts said it was highly likely that Sudja was fully under Ukrainian control.
Ukraine’s advance in the Kursk region has slowed recently as Russia has sent in more reinforcements, according to open-source battlefield maps based on combat footage and satellite imagery. Ukrainian forces appear to be trying to dig trenches along the border rather than push deeper into Russian territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged as much on Saturday, saying: “Now we are strengthening our positions. The foothold of our presence is getting stronger.”
Why is this important?
Kiev has frequently bombed Russian refineries and airports with drones since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It has also helped launch two other ground assaults in Russia. However, both were smaller-scale attacks by Russian exile groups backed by Ukrainian troops and ended in a quick retreat.
Until two weeks ago, Ukrainian troops had not launched a counteroffensive in Russia. The victory in Kursk was the fastest victory for Ukrainian troops since they recaptured the Kherson region of their country in November 2022.
How will Russia respond?
As Ukrainian troops pushed deeper into Russia, Moscow scrambled to shore up its defenses and Russian President Vladimir Putin convened security services to coordinate a response. The Russian military said it was sending more troops and armored vehicles to try to repel the attack, and Russian television showed images of convoys of military trucks.
Military analysts and U.S. officials say the Russian command has so far moved reinforcements mainly from within Russia to avoid exhausting its forces on the battlefield in Ukraine, in what they describe as a chaotic operation.
“Russia is still coordinating its response,” NATO’s top military commander, General Christopher Cavoli, said in a speech last week at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He said Russia’s response had been “rather slow and fragmented” and that authorities were still determining which military and security forces should take the lead.
So what about Putin?
The invasion was an embarrassment to Putin and his military establishment and raised questions about Russia’s preparedness.
Putin lashed out at the West in a tense videoconference with top officials last week, stressing how shocked Russia was by the attack. “The West is fighting us at the hands of the Ukrainians,” he said, repeating his frequent description of the war he started as a Western proxy operation against Russia.
The invasion of Ukraine has exposed Russia to an unprecedented level of war, with tens of thousands of civilians forced to evacuate border areas.
What was the purpose of the Ukrainian invasion?
Analysts believe that Ukraine’s offensive has two main purposes: to draw Russian troops away from the front line in eastern Ukraine and to seize territory that can be used as a bargaining chip in future peace talks.
Myhaylo Podolak, a senior adviser to the Ukrainian president, said last week that Russia would only be forced to the negotiating table if it suffered a “major tactical defeat.”
“In the Kursk region we can clearly see how military means are objectively used to persuade” Russia to enter a “fair negotiation process,” he wrote on social media.
The operation provided a much-needed morale boost for Ukrainians, whose military had been being eaten away by Russian forces for months.
But military analysts question whether a cross-border attack by Ukraine is worth the risk, given that Ukrainian troops are already deployed on the front lines at home.
What impact does this have on the struggle within Ukraine?
Even as Moscow scrambled to respond to the Kursk invasion, Russian forces have been fiercely attacking Ukrainian forces in the east, analysts, Western officials and Ukrainian soldiers say.
They say Russia has begun withdrawing small numbers of troops from Ukraine to try to help push back the Ukrainians, but not yet enough to have a significant impact on the overall battlefield.
Senior U.S. officials have privately said they understand Ukraine’s need to change the war narrative, but they doubt it can hold the territory long enough to force Russia to divert significant resources from Ukraine’s eastern and southern fronts.
While Ukraine’s allies have in the past worried that an incursion by Russia could escalate the war, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said last week that Ukraine had the EU’s “full support.”
Ukraine used some Western-supplied weapons in the Kursk operation. But the United States and Britain, two of Ukraine’s closest allies so far, said the incursion did not violate their policies.
What happens next?
As the Ukrainian offensive approaches its second week, analysts say Ukraine faces a number of options, each with its own challenges.
Ukrainian forces may try to continue pushing further into Russia, but this will become more difficult as Russian reinforcements arrive and Ukrainian supply lines stretch.
They could continue to dig into currently occupied territory and attempt to defend it, but this would likely expose Ukrainian fixed positions to potentially devastating Russian air strikes.
Or, after sustained losses in eastern Ukraine, they may decide they have made their point and retreat.
Thibault Fouillet, deputy director of the Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies at the French research center, said Ukraine’s next moves would depend on how Russia responds. “The coming week will be decisive,” he said.
This article was originally published on The New York Times.
By Andrew E. Kramer, Constant Méheut, Kim Barker, Anton Troianovski and Cassandra Vinograd
Photographs: David Guttenfelder, Nanna Heitmann and Tyler Hicks
©2024 The New York Times
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