OPINION
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are continuing their offensive in Russia’s Kursk Region, reportedly destroying the third and final bridge over the Seym River and capturing enlistment offices, where they’ve burned files on Russians evading military service. The Ukrainian operation has also exposed multiple misconceptions about Russia’s ongoing war, demonstrating that not even armed incursions are enough to trigger the Kremlin’s nebulous nuclear “red line.” Just one month ago, few could have predicted that, after a year of intense defense, the Ukrainian army would launch such a bold ground operation on enemy territory. Since 2022, the Ukrainians have been patiently waiting for military aid from their Western partners, a delay that prevented them from achieving meaningful results on the battlefield. By taking the initiative, Ukraine has caught not only Russia but also the United States off guard, according to independent defense analyst Colby Badhwar. Kyiv not only neglected to inform the White House about the forthcoming operation, but also violated the supposed restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons on enemy territory. The occupation of internationally recognized Russian land may force President Biden to grant the Ukrainian leadership even greater autonomy going forward.
“A German-made armored fighting vehicle rolls through a field in Kursk Oblast” — mere weeks ago, such a sentence could only have been found in a history book about the Eastern Front during the Second World War. That changed on August 6, 2024, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched an operation that will also surely be the subject of many future tomes. While Ukrainian forays into Russian Federation territory are not a new development in the war, this latest incursion, still unfolding, bears little resemblance to past small-scale raids. The Freedom of Russia Legion and Russian Volunteer Corps, which had been responsible for most of the prior cross-border incursions, are seemingly absent from the present iteration. This is a much larger operation, being conducted by several different regular units of the Ukrainian military. Having already succeeded in capturing several hundred square kilometers of territory, the surprise attack on a quiet sector of the border with Russia has drawn much speculation about Ukraine’s motives, and much analysis of the operation’s progress. It is still too early to draw many conclusions about tactics and the success of the overall operation, but there are already strategic implications to examine.
Consider the context in which Ukraine has launched this attack. Kyiv’s forces had been on the defensive for the past year, slowly losing territory to Russian attacks in the Donbas. It is difficult to think of any credible analyst who predicted that Ukraine would be able to undertake any offensive operations this year. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are short on ammunition, short on personnel, and under constant Russian pressure, with many units being kept on the front line long beyond the point of combat ineffectiveness. The AFU’s 2023 counter-offensive had gone so poorly that it was inconceivable they could even attempt to retake the initiative while suffering from such a shortage of resources. These predictions have rested on some faulty assumptions though, one of which speaks to a great failure of imagination on the part of us analysts.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the war has been fought largely on Moscow’s terms. Even when Ukraine controlled the strategic initiative, the fighting was still taking place on Ukrainian soil, with Ukrainian forces seeking to retake territory captured by the Russians. Ukraine was still in effect responding to Russia’s decisions. The 2023 counteroffensive began with the hope of liberating territory in quantities comparable to those achieved in the 2022 Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives. Though the 2023 offensive was unsuccessful, these operations largely shaped our imagination of what future Ukrainian offensives would seek to achieve. It was assumed that Ukraine could not embark on a new offensive because its forces have been struggling to repel Russian attacks in the Donbas, and Russian fortifications elsewhere on the front preclude Ukraine successfully breaking through.
Russian fortifications are not strong everywhere though. While Ukraine has been on guard against potential Russian attacks emanating from all directions — including from Belarus — and has built fortifications accordingly, Russia has left much of its frontier relatively unguarded. There has been the same failure of imagination in Russian leadership, or at least a faulty risk assessment. The possibility that Ukrainian forces would undertake a significant ground operation deep into Russian territory, rather than solely focus on liberating their own, was evidently not rated as likely. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but this Russian assumption does not look very smart considering the past cross-border raids and ongoing strike campaign in Russia. Ukrainian leadership has made clear that Russia needs to experience the reality of the war it started, and the current operation is the logical next step in that campaign. Russian forces are now forced to hastily prepare new fortifications on the approaches to Kursk because the frontier was insufficiently defended.
With the caveat that it is still early to make any clear conclusions about the outcome of the operation, the initial results suggest that Ukrainian command may have been underestimated. My own predictions, in line with the consensus, were that Ukraine would need until next year to reconstitute existing units and establish new ones. While this operation is much smaller than the 2023 counteroffensive, the fact that the AFU has been able to organize sufficient reserves of experienced units while simultaneously preventing a Russian breakthrough in the Donbas is impressive.
Recall also that it’s not just the Donbas that has been under pressure; since May, Russia has been pursuing an ongoing offensive on the Kharkiv front. Ukraine’s 82nd Air Assault Brigade was engaged in heavy fighting there, but is now spearheading the Kursk operation. Deploying the veteran 82nd after perhaps a brief period of rest seems to have paid off, at least initially, with a Ukrainian General Staff source telling The Economist: “Conscript[ed Russian] soldiers faced paratroopers and simply surrendered.”
The operation now includes elements of perhaps up to a dozen different brigades, indicating a high level of planning and logistical preparation. But while the Ukrainian General Staff source further explained that “we sent our most combat-ready units to the weakest point on their border,” not all the units involved had the opportunity to prepare. The 33rd Brigade has been engaged in heavy fighting in Donetsk, but at least some of its men were pulled out on extremely short notice to join the Kurk operation. Time will tell if this was a wise decision, but right now the penetration of Russian lines is at least 25 kilometers deep and 40 wide, having grown each day from the start.
Caught off guard, Russian command has been rushing reinforcements from Kharkiv and other quieter sectors of the front to Kursk. Without getting into predictions of just how many forces Russia will have to redeploy to meet Ukraine’s attack, the strategic implications are clear. Ukraine had been at a major disadvantage, forced to defend their entire frontier not just with Russia, but with Belarus as well. Until August 6, Russia had the luxury of lightly guarding their border, freeing up forces to be concentrated for offensive operations inside Ukraine. Going forward, however, Russia will have to allocate substantially more resources — both men and materiel — to guard the border. Even if they manage to eject the Ukrainian forces from Kursk, the threat of future large-scale incursions will loom.
The most significant ramifications of the Kursk operation are not strategic though, but grand strategic. Since the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian government has been forced to fight not just on the battlefields, but in the halls of power in Western capitals. It has been a painstaking campaign to convince the U.S., Germany and other key supporters to provide the weapons the Ukrainian Armed Forces need to defeat the Russian invaders. While extremely slow, incremental gains have been made over the course of the past 30 months, with a multitude of feeble justifications having come and gone in order to justify why certain systems could not be provided to Ukraine, one constant Western refrain has been the loudest: the fear that a third world war could erupt if Russia is put on the back foot.
The risk of escalation has been a constant excuse from German Chancellor Scholz as to why Germany cannot provide Ukraine with long range TAURUS cruise missiles. For the Administration of President Joe Biden, fear of escalation has been the single most important guiding principle of their approach to the war. Even before Russia launched its invasion, the Biden Administration delayed the public announcement of a security assistance package for Ukraine in an attempt to de-escalate tensions with Russia, even as Ukraine was asking for additional weapons to help deter the looming invasion. In March of 2022, the White House declared that transferring MiG fighter jets from Poland and other former Eastern Bloc states to Ukraine would be too provocative a step. The same concerns delayed the transfer of the now legendary HIMARS, and the narrative arc has repeated itself for virtually every major weapon system Ukraine has asked for. All were once deemed too aggressive, too risky — but Russia has taken no unprecedented action in response to their eventual arrival on the battlefield.
The latest battle in Ukraine’s fight against the Biden Administration’s anxieties has been over the prohibition on using donated long-range missiles to strike strategic targets deep in Russian territory. This prohibition applies not just to American weapons, but to British and French as well. In May Zelensky told The Guardian that despite signals from the UK that Ukraine could defend its territory as Kyiv saw fit, they could not use British Storm Shadow cruise missiles to strike Russia without approval from Washington. Zelensky stressed to Reuters that Ukraine had abided by all the conditions placed on it so as not to “put the whole volume of weapons at risk.” Ukraine’s campaign targeting Russian infrastructure and military installations using its own indigenously produced drones has further highlighted the absurdity of these escalation fears, but it has so far been unsuccessful in convincing President Biden to change his policy.
Ukraine’s occupation of internationally recognized Russian territory may change that. Russian doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons lists “large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation” as one of the situations that could justify a nuclear response. The Kursk operation is a clear demonstration that Putin’s nuclear sabre rattling is just that. Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is now within range of Ukrainian tube artillery — not that they have any intention of damaging it — but if that threat doesn’t provoke an escalation from Russia, it’s hard to see what else would. There has been so much concern in the Biden Administration over the threat of escalation that there hasn’t seemed to be any consideration of the possibility that Moscow might actually be more afraid of Washington than Washington is of Moscow. Recall that President Biden issued his own warning that Russia’s use of weapons of mass destruction would cross an American red line.
The international response to the Kursk operation suggests that Ukraine may have pulled off a real diplomatic masterstroke. The first reaction from the United States government was from the National Security Council’s John Kirby, who on August 7 said that his side would be “reaching out to our Ukrainian counterparts to get a little bit better understanding [about the operation].” This was an interesting contrast to the reaction from across the Atlantic, where the European Commission issued a very strong statement that explicitly recognized Ukraine’s right to retaliate against Russian territory, and where Marcus Faber, Chair of the Bundestag’s Defence committee called the operation both legitimate and militarily sensible. The difference between Kirby’s statement and those of the Europeans reveals that there was indeed transatlantic division in how the Kursk operation was first received.
The following day, at the Pentagon’s regular press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh offered a bizarre response when asked whether the Kursk operation was consistent with the Biden Administration’s policy on Ukraine’s permitted uses of U.S.-supplied weapons, saying that “It is consistent with our policy and we have supported Ukraine from the very beginning to defend themselves against attacks that are coming across the border.”
U.S. policymakers of course have not permitted Ukraine to retaliate across the border “from the very beginning.” That change was only made earlier this summer, and had numerous restrictions applied to it. Ukraine was not and is still not permitted to utilize long-range weapons such as ATACMS or Storm Shadow. Ukraine was also only permitted to return fire or strike Russian forces that were posing an imminent threat. The policy never permitted Ukraine to use American weapons to launch large-scale ground operations into Russia. Attacking a quiet section of the border in Kursk also violates the conditions that Ukraine can only return fire or target imminent threats. The Biden Administration has remained adamant that they have not changed their policy on what Ukraine is permitted to do, and yet they maintain that Ukraine’s recent actions are consistent with longstanding American positions.
It is of course possible that Ukraine was given more latitude than what was publicly disclosed, but the available evidence does not support this theory. The U.S. Department of State was quick to say that they were not advised in advance of the operation, and that it was not unusual for the Ukrainians not to inform them. The White House has also confirmed that they were not given advanced notice. From the Ukrainian perspective, it makes perfect sense to not inform the Biden Administration, given their extensive track record of deliberately leaking information as a tactic of escalation management. Virtually every major decision about a new weapon system being provided to Ukraine was disclosed to the press prior to its arrival in theatre, including highly sensitive ones like ATACMS. The risk of briefing Washington in advance would just be too high; the operation could have been compromised, or at the very least, the Americans could have told Kyiv to cancel it.
U.S. officials have confirmed this scenario to the New York Times, claiming that “they were given no formal heads-up about the high-risk mission — possibly because Ukrainian officials feared the Americans would try to persuade Ukraine to call it off, possibly because of Ukraine’s obsessive concern over leaks. Ukraine was also using American-supplied vehicles, arms and munitions, despite President Biden’s caution in May that Ukraine could only use American-made weapons inside Russia for limited self-defense strikes.”
Ukrainian leadership evidently made the decision that it would be better to ask for forgiveness, rather than ask for permission. Over the course of the war they have largely taken the latter approach, and it has delivered painfully incremental results. Though the former was not without risks, Ukraine has succeeded in outmaneuvering both Russia and the United States at the same time.
Launching the Kursk operation has significantly shifted the Overton window when it comes to talk of the Kremlin’s purported nuclear “red lines.” The Biden Administration’s escalation fears look even more foolish, and Ukraine has forced them into giving their public approval to the operation. Perhaps in private the White House remains skeptical, but publicly rebuking Ukraine was not an option given the strong statements from the Europeans, as the Biden Administration puts a high priority on appearing to act in concert with allies.
The task ahead for Ukraine is to maintain momentum — not just for the ongoing operation on the ground, but for the political and strategic communications campaign too. They haven’t wasted much time; an advisor to President Zelensky told The Washington Post that they were formally submitting a request to the Biden Administration for authorization to use ATACMS on Russian air bases. In recent months, Ukraine has successfully hit Russia’s Morozovsk and Lipetsk air bases with their long-range drones, and the use of ATACMS would allow the AFU to inflict even more damage. Though the campaign for these restrictions to be lifted is nothing new, a formal request is the final level of pressure that Ukraine can apply to their effort. How President Biden responds will be instructive to the Ukrainians on their next course of action. If the request is denied — or designated for indefinite internal review within the Administration — President Zelensky may once again elect to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.
The Kursk offensive has proven a lot of assumptions wrong. Ukraine’s prospects for success have been underestimated, the Russians have grown a little too overconfident, escalation fears in the White House and the Bundeskanzler‘s office continue to be proven folly, and Zelensky’s own fears of American retribution may be overstated. Ukraine has demonstrated that it is not stuck at the mercy of the slow drip of incremental assistance from the United States. Kyiv can take bold action and force the Administration’s hand.
Zelensky is holding more cards than is commonly understood. The restrictions on weapons are increasingly unpopular in Congress, and the perpetually risk-averse Biden may soon view being at odds with his own party as a major political liability. Though he himself does not have to worry about re-election, Vice President Harris has been closely tied to his own policies, and voters will judge her on the success or failure of the war.
President Biden also needs to consider his own legacy. Though Winston Churchill never actually said it, a famous quote often attributed to him reads: “You can depend on Americans to do the right thing when they have exhausted every other possibility.” Will Biden continue to exhaust all possibilities before giving in to Ukrainian requests? Or will he lead from the front and help Kyiv deliver a knockout blow?