Russia is trying to drive Ukraine out of Kursk, but the counterattack is not yet gaining momentum

CNN
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A Russian counteroffensive aimed at recapturing parts of the Kursk disaster lost to Ukrainian forces after a surprise cross-border attack is already underway but has yet to gain momentum.

Ukraine began its offensive last month, capturing dozens of settlements, surprising even Kyiv's allies. But observers have said from the start that Ukraine was unlikely to be able to hold on to its gains.

Geolocated videos show that Russian units have recaptured some villages, but the situation remains uncertain. Both the quality and number of Russian troops stationed in the region are unclear, and reliable reports from the front are few and far between.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged the start of the Russian counteroffensive and said they intend to deploy 60,000-70,000 troops in the Kursk region. However, he said on Friday that the Russians “have not yet had any serious success. Our heroic soldiers are holding out.”

The US estimates that Russia would need up to 20 brigades – around 50,000 troops – to drive Ukrainian troops out of Kursk. But Major General Pat Ryder, spokesman for the US Department of Defense, said on Thursday that Russian actions so far had been “marginal” and analysts had not expected the number or quality of troops to be sufficient to quickly drive out the much smaller Ukrainian forces.

Some high-profile units do indeed appear to be involved in the Russian counteroffensive. A geolocated video showed elements of the elite 51st Airborne Regiment taking part in an attack on Thursday. However, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believes that few of the Russian units in Kursk “consist of combat-experienced units.”

Early indications suggest that Russian forces may attempt to cut off Ukrainian troops near the town of Korenevo before launching a large-scale counteroffensive.

A Ukrainian officer who took part in the Kursk operation told CNN on Friday that the Russians have captured about two kilometers on the western edge of the zone captured by the Ukrainians last month (an assessment shared by Russian military bloggers). The officer said their operations were hampered by poor communications.

A video emerged showing the Russian flag – and, incidentally, the flag of the private military company Wagner – being raised in the village of Snahost. However, the officer said the situation had stabilized and there was heavy fighting in another nearby village.

There are also signs that Ukrainian units are developing a new attack route into another part of Kursk, near the town of Veseloye. This could serve to divert Russian forces.

“By launching surprise offensives across the thinly guarded border, Ukraine can wage an operational-level guerrilla war, supporting its overall strategy of attrition,” says Robert Rose of the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Despite the growing Russian counterattack in Kursk and mounting Ukrainian losses, Zelensky insists that the invasion of Kursk was necessary and useful and has slowed the Russian advance in eastern Donetsk, where the city of Pokrovsk is under immediate threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to fully capture four eastern Ukrainian regions that he already partially controls, and most of the fighting in the war is concentrated in this area.

At a roundtable discussion in Kyiv moderated by CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Friday, Zelensky said Russia's artillery ammunition advantage in the Pokrovsk area had narrowed from 12:1 to 2.5:1, attributing this to the success of the Kursk campaign.

“The speed [of the Russian advance] in the Donetsk sector was even faster before the Kursk operation. And not only in Donetsk [sector]but throughout the East,” said Zelensky.

Although Russian momentum waned in the first week of September, no significant units were withdrawn to fight in Kursk, although some were moved from less contested areas along the 1,000-kilometer front line. The Kremlin appears to be prioritizing the goal of making progress in Donetsk over reclaiming lost Russian territory – at least for now.

The Ukrainians have given several reasons for the Kursk operation: It would force Russia to redeploy its troops currently stationed on the Ukrainian front. It would give Ukraine land in exchange for possible negotiations. It would make Putin's “red lines” absurd. And it would create a pool of prisoners of war for exchange (which it already has).

Zelensky claims that the Kursk operation showed that Putin's warnings about the consequences of escalation were hollow.

Now Zelensky added another justification for the Kursk offensive: it had forestalled a Russian plan to occupy a wide strip of northern Ukraine as a buffer zone, a plan that would have swallowed up “regional centers.”

He told the Kyiv panel that “information from our partners” indicated that the Russians intended to create “security zones” deep inside Ukraine.

The Washington-based think tank ISW said on Friday that the Russian military command may have planned “additional offensive operations along a broader and more continuous front in northeastern Ukraine in order to significantly disperse Ukrainian forces.”

Such Russian ambitions are on hold for now. They still have the advantage in firepower and soldiers on most front lines and will continue to use the tactic of intensive bombardment – followed by infantry advances through the ruins of the destroyed areas – to wear down the enemy.

The Ukrainians have several immediate priorities: They want to build and strengthen defensive lines in the east and speed up the formation of new units; they are developing longer-range strike capabilities to destroy Russian infrastructure such as airfields and fuel depots; and they are demanding more freedom to use Western precision missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory.

Zelensky told Fareed Zakaria on Friday that Russia's guided aerial bombs (so-called FABs) were responsible for 80 percent of the destroyed infrastructure – and that Ukraine urgently needed to hit the airfields from which they were fired.

This appeal appears to be gaining traction. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at his meeting with US President Joe Biden on Friday: “The next few weeks and months could be crucial – it is very, very important that we support Ukraine in this crucial war for freedom.”

But the Biden administration is concerned about the consequences of what the Kremlin sees as an escalation that would lead to direct NATO intervention in the conflict.

The Kursk invasion could encourage Ukraine to develop another tool that “could fundamentally change Ukrainian combat strategy,” said Rose of the Modern War Institute.

“Ukraine cannot achieve a decisive victory over Russia through maneuver. However, it can use maneuver to exploit vulnerabilities, force Russia to overstretch, create chaos, encircle Russian forces, and capture Russian equipment.”

The crux of the matter, said Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven, is how Ukraine influences Putin's decision-making, whether at Kursk or through far sharper attacks within Russia, or both.

“Will it make him negotiate? Will it make him back down or pause in Donetsk?”

With Kursk, it may have been possible to convince Biden and other Western allies to authorize deeper attacks, says Schmidt. And: “If follow-up attacks can keep the war going deep inside Russia, then that affects the Russians and then influences the Kremlin's decision-making.”

That would be a success. But we have to ask the bigger question, as the US ultimately did in Iraq, says Schmidt. “How will this end?”