Some people say that western aid to Ukraine is inconsequential, but Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk province shows otherwise. Evidently, when we give the Ukrainians the weapons they need to defend themselves, that translates into battlefield success.
The Kursk incursion began early last week, when hundreds of Ukrainian troops poured over the border and swiftly captured approximately 1,000 square kilometres of territory. According to the Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo, it took Ukraine roughly 24 hours to overwhelm fortifications that Moscow had spent $170 million building.
Russian officials immediately declared a “federal level” state of emergency in Kursk and the neighbouring provinces of Bryansk and Belgorod. They later reported that 28 settlements were lost and that over 120,000 Russian civilians were evacuated from the region, with a further 60,000 evacuations planned for the near future.
The incursion caught the entire world off guard and infuriated Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has since vowed a “worthy response.” However, attempts to expel the Ukrainians have proven unsuccessful so far. Though Russia has sent reinforcements, including troops pulled out of southern Ukraine, they have also come under heavy Ukrainian attack.
While Kyiv has organized occasional raids into Russian territory for over a year, previous incursions were much smaller in scale and quickly repelled. Crucially, they were conducted by the Free Russia Legion, a Ukrainian paramilitary unit of anti-Putin Russian defectors.
But this time, things are different. The occupying troops are Ukrainian, and with both sides now digging trenches and fortifying their positions, it seems that a new front line may be stabilizing. Unless Moscow launches an effective counterattack soon, before the Ukrainians fully settle in, the first foreign occupation of Russian territory since the Second World War will be inevitable.
While the land taken by Ukraine is minuscule, amounting to only three per cent of the Kursk province, its symbolic value is considerable. As such, it could present Kyiv with a valuable bargaining chip for future negotiations, while making it more difficult for Russia to advocate for a ceasefire that simply freezes current frontlines.
According to a Ukrainian security official, who spoke with the Guardian on condition of anonymity, the purpose of the Kursk intrusion has been to “stretch the positions of the enemy, to inflict maximum losses and to destabilize the situation in Russia as they are unable to protect their own border.”
If the Ukrainians indeed want to embarrass Putin, then there are already early signs of success.
The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported last week that Kursk residents felt abandoned, as local administrators had provided little assistance with evacuations, and were having doubts about the Russian military.
Similarly, the Moscow Times reported that residents had taken to social media to express their frustrations. “Nobody cared about us … the refugees from that country (Ukraine) were given everything at once … and (local) people left for nowhere and with nothing,” wrote a woman from the town of Sudzha.
In a televised address on Monday, Putin indirectly acknowledged the challenges to his political and moral authority. “One of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society,” he said, vowing to retake the occupied territories.
But the very fact that he had to make such an announcement is, in many ways, a defeat.
Just a few short months ago, it would’ve been unthinkable for Ukraine to launch such an attack. Thanks to the obstructionism of a few Russian-friendly Republicans, American aid shipments had been frozen for months, leaving Kyiv starved of weapons and vulnerable.
Without sufficient artillery shells, Ukrainian forces were pummelled and forced to abandon several strongholds in the Donbas. Meanwhile, ammunition for air defence systems ran so low that Moscow was able to successfully destroy roughly half of Ukraine’s power generating capacity, leading to the reintroduction of widespread, controlled blackouts.
The situation was so dire that, when Russia launched renewed attacks in the northeast in May, marching towards Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, many feared that the city would face a devastating siege and could perhaps be lost.
But then American aid was finally permitted to flow again and the tides of war changed. The march on Kharkiv was arrested and most of the land taken by the Russians in the northeast was rapidly recaptured in a series of counterattacks. Even so, the situation in the Donbas remains dire, with the Russians continuing their slow, but steady, advancements.
Some have blamed Ukraine’s ongoing losses on the Biden administration’s ban on using American-supplied weapons on Russian soil, which has created an asymmetric war dynamic and permitted Russia to shorten its supply lines by safely massing soldiers and weapons near the Ukrainian border.
Though U.S. President Joe Biden made an exception for attacks on Russian territory near Kharkiv, the ban remains in effect in all other areas due to a fear of escalating the conflict. But it seems that if American weapons cannot be used to strike deeply into Russia, then the workaround is to simply convert some of these territories into Ukrainian-held land.
This is not conjecture: on Tuesday, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the Kursk incursion would have been “less necessary” had long-range attacks into Russian territories been permitted.
Yet again, the Ukrainians have proven themselves resourceful, so long as they are given the means to fight. The West must take this lesson to heart and let the weapons flow.
National Post