Ukraine has accepted the gamble of launching an attack on Russia’s Kursk province, despite the risk of both military and political losses.
As Ukraine’s seven-month incursion into Russia’s Kursk province nears its end, Ukrainian soldiers and military experts are questioning the campaign’s goals and its long-term impact on the conflict.
Ukraine launched a surprise cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024. Kiev’s initial goal was to seize control of Russia’s border territories in order to divert Russian forces from eastern Ukraine.
This calculation by Ukraine seems to have failed, as Russian troops continue to advance into Donetsk Oblast in Ukraine, reaching the gates of Pokrovsk region by the end of 2024.
As Ukraine continues to control parts of the Russian border and the new US administration seeks to force Kiev into peace talks, a new objective for Ukraine’s military operation in Kursk is beginning to take shape. Kiev wants to use the incursion into Russian territory as a bargaining chip in potential peace talks.
In January, former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the territories Ukraine gained in Kursk could “contribute to any negotiations that might take place next year”.
“If Kursk was a gamble, tactically the operation was successful, even though the next stages were not carried out,” said military analyst Michael Kofman, senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
surprise attack
Months before the incursion into Russian territory, Ukraine warned that a Moscow attack on Sumy province, located across the border from Kursk province and far from the war zone, was imminent.
This gives Ukraine a reason to deploy troops and equipment in border areas as a defensive measure.
Sapper Oleksii, of the elite 80th Air Assault Brigade, confirmed the deployment of troops to clear border areas of mines for artillery positions in the weeks before the incursion.
According to Oleksii, the Ukrainian brigade broke through the border after long-range weapons and air strikes overnight. The breakthrough, which took place on August 6, shocked even Western countries and many Ukrainians.
But soldiers on the ground said some were skeptical of the incursion into Russian territory even before it began. Oleksii said one of his battalions saw more than half of the soldiers refuse orders. They questioned why they had to invade Russian territory when Ukraine’s defenses elsewhere were under threat.
Ukrainian forces attacked from multiple directions, with the main axis being the 80th and 82nd Air Assault Brigades targeting the Sudzha area.
Yaroslav, a soldier in a reconnaissance group of Ukrainian special forces identified as the Ua Reg Team, said his unit had advanced towards the city of Kursk, northeast of Sudzha.
“It was a diversionary exercise,” said Yaroslav, whose unit withdrew in February.
With a completely new direction opening up “many different possibilities,” Yaroslav said his unit conducted ambushes and attacks.
However, the Ukrainian campaign in Kursk encountered many difficulties.
A drone operator nicknamed Crimea said the 82nd Brigade did not have enough troops to advance further than a few streets in the town they had broken through.
“The war was ineffective for the simple reason that the Ukrainian armed forces had only one road to transport all supplies to the participating units,” said war expert Tom Cooper, referring to the main road from Sumy to Sudzha province.
According to soldiers on the ground, the lack of communication and coordination with other units makes it difficult to know who is around. They added that the Starlink satellite internet system, which Ukrainian soldiers use to communicate on the battlefield, does not work in Russia.
“Kursk was not an easy area to operate in. The terrain was very difficult, communications were patchy in the early stages, which made the battle disadvantageous,” said analyst Kofman.
Russia’s fierce counterattack
By mid-September 2024, Russia had gathered enough troops to launch a counterattack to regain territory.
However, Russia continues to prioritize offensive efforts in Donetsk province, where Moscow’s troops are gaining ground near the city of Pokrovsk.
According to experts, Kiev hoped that the pressure along the front line would ease if Russia had to redeploy its troops to Kursk. However, contrary to Kiev’s calculations, Russia mainly deployed reserve forces and soldiers from non-priority fronts such as Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine to fight in Kursk.
In early September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had sent more than 60,000 troops to Kursk to counter the Ukrainian incursion. Kiev claimed to control about 100 Russian settlements and more than 600 prisoners.
Contrary to Ukraine’s calculations when it opened the Kursk front, Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine has accelerated. Russia has seized the opportunity when some of Ukraine’s most elite and combat-experienced units were being withdrawn from the Donetsk front.
With each successive attack, the Russian military continued to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk. Eventually, Russia changed the frequency of its drone attacks and used fiber-optic drones, hampering Ukraine’s jamming capabilities and making logistics impossible.
“It’s an invincible weapon,” said Ukrainian soldier Oleksii.
As of January, Russia’s offensive has slowed, even as the Russian military occasionally gains ground, according to Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst at the OSINT Oryx Project.
Experts say Russia knows Ukraine’s logistical weaknesses because the only road leading into Sudzha from Sumy province is essentially the backbone of the Kursk region.
“So they clearly know where to focus within the scope of this logistics route, and over time they have done that,” the expert said.
Increasingly difficult logistics forced Ukraine to expend resources to sustain the offensive at Kursk, turning a surprise raid into a months-long battle that weakened Ukrainian strength.
To the north of the Kursk operation, Yaroslav soldiers said Russia deployed two brigades, constantly putting pressure on Ukrainian forces.
To maintain offensive operations in eastern Ukraine, Russia is also believed to have deployed about 12,000 additional North Korean troops in Kursk to force Ukrainian troops to retreat, according to Ukrainian and Western intelligence.
According to Yaroslav, the Koreans would attack in groups and wait for the Russian infantry to take over the captured positions. However, the Koreans were said to have lacked coordination with the Russians and suffered heavy losses.
Yaroslav said North Korean soldiers fought from the right and left flanks in Kursk, as well as areas near the Ukrainian border. Although initially vulnerable to drones, North Korean soldiers began to adjust their tactics and shoot down aerial targets.
The inevitable retreat
Even as Ukraine retook some positions in Kursk earlier this year, a retreat was inevitable.
“Russian forces steadily tightened the bag, then using fiber-optic drones, they were finally able to start blocking Ukrainian supply routes. Ultimately, Ukrainian forces could not sustain themselves logistically and had to retreat,” said Kofman.
The combat capabilities and experience of Ukrainian units in Kursk have been declining over time, Yaroslav, a Ukrainian special forces soldier, added, forcing elite assault units to replace regular infantry to defend positions.
The elite airborne assault brigades, with experience from Donetsk, Kharkov and Zaporizhzhia provinces, proved their worth in the initial breakthrough, but over time, “the paratroopers became infantry and were beaten to pieces,” according to Yaroslav.
“By early February, Ukraine could no longer afford to stay in Kursk,” said Janovsky of Oryx, which tracks Ukrainian and Russian losses using open-source data. He said extending the stay in Kursk was “a wrong political decision.”
“Ukraine does not have the resources to sustain such a campaign without sacrifice,” the expert added.
Expert Cooper believes that by failing to withdraw in time, Ukrainian military leaders significantly reduced the survival chances of soldiers in the area.
