Ukraine Has Been on the Offensive in the Kursk Region for Two Weeks Now. What Has It Achieved and What Will Happen Next?

What Ukrainian forces have captured in two weeks

During the offensive in the Kursk Region, which started on 6 August, Ukrainian forces captured 92 settlements and controlled about 1,250 square kilometers, Volodymyr Zelensky said on the evening of 19 August. The Ukrainian OSINT project DeepState believes that the Ukrainian military controls about 650 square kilometers, with about 600 more in the gray zone. The USA-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) estimates that the offensive is about 56 kilometers wide, with the Ukrainians advancing up to 28 kilometers deep into Russian territory. The largest of the captured settlements is the city of Sudzha. The Ukrainian armed forces have set up a military commandant office there, and Ukrainian and Western journalists have visited the city already.

Why the Ukrainian military met virtually no resistance at the border, "Important Stories" explained here.

To the east and northeast of Sudzha, Russians managed to stop the Ukrainian's advance. However, the Ukrainian forces offensive continues in other directions, although not at the same pace as in the first days. To the north, the Ukrainians are advancing to the district center of Lgov, from which it is only 25 km to Kurchatov and the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. To the northwest, there is fighting for another district center, Korenevo.

Many analysts say it is difficult to establish where the front line is. Firstly, this is due to the usual "fog of war" in such cases, and secondly, to the tactics of the Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians operate in mobile groups: when encountering the Russians, for example, a stronghold, one part of the group enters the battle, tying up the enemy, and another continues to move. This tactic was particularly effective in the first days of the operation. Later, when the Russians pulled up reserves, they began to ambush small columns of the AFU. This happened, for example, near Safonovka, about 30 kilometers north of Sudzha.

Soon, the Ukrainians will probably try to take control of most of the Glushkovsky district. This area is bordered by Ukraine to the south and west. The territory to the east is already controlled by the AFU, and the northern border is the Seim River. The Ukrainians have already destroyed all three bridges across the river in this section, making supplying the Russian group as difficult as possible. The Russians have built two pontoon bridges, one of which disappeared by the evening of August 19 - satellite images showed smoke 500 meters away from it, Radio Liberty reported. It is quite easy to destroy a pontoon bridge, explains Ruslan Leviev, founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team: "One artillery shell hits it and that's it, it is virtually inoperable until the damaged section is replaced".

"I don't see any tools for the Russian army to change the situation in this "pocket" between the Seim River and the border. The AFU will seize it shortly," writes military expert Yan Matveev.

It is still difficult to count the losses from both sides because of the same "fog of war". According to the calculations of OSINT analyst Naalsio, by August 16, the AFU lost 51 units of equipment. These are mostly armored vehicles, but there are also 4 tanks, 12 armored personnel carriers (APC), and an American HIMARS MLRS destroyed in the Sumy region. The Russians lost 27 pieces of equipment, including 6 tanks and 3 APCs.

The Ukrainian leadership names the capture of Russian soldiers an important achievement; they are planned to be exchanged for Ukrainians. "This is important. It brings closer the release of our military, our civilians from Russian captivity," Volodymyr Zelensky claimed. A week after the start of the offensive, the Ukrainian president spoke about "hundreds" of Russian convicts. According to the member of the Ukrainian group "Information Resistance" Oleksandr Kovalenko, by August 16 there were about 2,500 convicts, but there is no confirmation.

Among the captives are many conscripts. "Important Stories" verified the names of 25 of them. We wrote here how the missing conscripts are being searched for by their relatives.

What goals does Ukraine pursue and is it able to achieve them

To redirect the forces of the Russian army. On the scale of the entire front, the AFU is trying to force the Russian command to transfer units from other directions to the Kursk region, analysts say from the first days of the offensive. First of all, the Ukrainians would like to weaken the Russian group that is conducting an offensive on Pokrovsk and Toretsk (Donetsk Oblast) - where Russians have been advancing in recent months.

At best, this duty so far has been accomplished only partially. On August 15, John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, reported the transfer of Russian units from Ukraine to the Kursk region. ISW believes, that from Donetsk Oblast to the Kursk Oblast have been transferred a battalion of the International Brigade "Pyatnashka" and part of the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade which storming Chasov Yar. According to The Wall Street Journal, it might be several incomplete brigades of up to 5,000 men in total, one of which has been sent from the Donetsk region. But the Russians may need about 20,000 more well-trained troops to knock out the Ukrainian forces.

If the Russian command is indeed sending units from Ukraine to the Kursk region, it will certainly not extract them from near Pokrovsk and Toretsk. The reserves first will be taken from less important areas, such as Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and the AFU must surely understand this logic, says Ruslan Leviev, founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team. On the other hand, to prevent the Ukrainians from advancing further in Kursk Oblast, the Russians need to pull reserves as quickly as possible, says Mark Kansian, a retired U.S. Navy colonel and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Therefore, we cannot rule out the transfer of troops from Donetsk Oblast, which is much easier than from Kherson or Zaporizhzhya Oblasts.

After the start of the operation in the Kursk region, Leviev does not notice a decrease in the pace of the Russian offensive on Pokrovsk and Toretsk. The Economist's source in the Ukrainian government says that since August 16, the activity of Russian troops in Donbas has noticeably decreased, but not in the Pokrovsk direction.

If the Russians, despite the situation in Kursk Oblast, continue to advance on Pokrovk and Toretsk and succeed, the question arises as to the expediency of the Ukrainian's operation on Russian territory. The Wall Street Journal estimates that about 10,000 Ukrainian fighters are involved in the offensive. At some point, the Ukrainian command may be faced with a choice: to return this grouping for the defense of the Donetsk region or to put the front at risk of a Russian breakthrough, The Times says. The offensive at Kursk Region itself is getting riskier by the day: the Ukrainian armed forces' losses are growing, and the Russians are pulling in more and more reserves, The Economist notes.

"The multiple effects achieved as a result of the Kursk operation far exceed those of a possible halt of Russian troops at Pokrovsk," says Oleksiy Arestovich, a former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine. He considers the use of accumulated reserves on Russian territory more justified than "just throwing them near Pokrovsk, just 'grinding them down' there, slowing down [the Russian offensive] for a while and continuing to retreat."

To improve positions in possible peace talks. "In the Kursk region, we can see how the military force is being used to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process," Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Ukraine's Office of the President, wrote on Friday. Ukraine is not satisfied not only with Putin's ultimatum to withdraw troops from four Ukrainian regions within its administrative boundaries but also with the possible freezing of the conflict along the existing front line. If Ukraine controls part of Russia's internationally recognized territory, it could theoretically be exchanged for occupied Ukrainian land (or at least part of it).

The question is how exactly the AFU offensive in the Kursk Region will affect Vladimir Putin's willingness to negotiate. "The enemy seeks to improve its negotiating position in the future. But what kind of negotiations can we even talk about <...>? What can we talk about with them?", Putin said on the seventh day of the offensive. The prospects for talks have become more remote, two former senior Russian officials close to the Kremlin told The New York Times. Putin now wants "not peace but revenge," one of them said. The sources said that Putin is confident that the Russian army has superiority in manpower and weapons.

The AFU offensive has already disrupted "indirect talks" between Russia and Ukraine in Qatar, where they were supposed to negotiate to stop strikes on energy infrastructure, according to The Washington Post. The Russians did not pull out of the talks completely, asking to be given time, one of the publication's sources said. According to the Russian source, Putin is now unlikely to agree to such agreements: "The Russian leadership does not usually compromise under pressure."

Convince the West to increase military aid. Ukraine needs the U.S. to lift all restrictions on the use of its weapons on Russian territory, primarily long-range ATACMS missiles.

After Russia launched its offensive in Kharkiv Oblast in May, the U.S. leadership authorized the AFU to strike with American weapons at Russian border areas from where the Russians had been shelling Ukraine and where they had been amassing forces. During the offensive in the Kursk Region, the Ukrainians used American Stryker armored personnel carriers and other equipment, but so far they have not moved beyond the borders set by the United States, so "technically" the U.S. ban has not been violated, CNN wrote.

The U.S. is not ready yet to lift all restrictions on strikes with ATACMS missiles. They insist that the munitions continue to be used for attacks on Crimea and other occupied territories. This may not be because the U.S. fears an escalation of the war, but due to the limited number of ATACMS. In addition, the Americans do not consent to the Ukrainians using British Storm Shadow missiles without restrictions, The Times reports. The UK leadership is ready for such a step, but it must be approved by the US and other NATO partners.

After the offensive began, it became known that the Joe Biden administration was discussing the possibility of transferring long-range cruise missiles JASSM to Ukraine. Their range exceeds 300 kilometers, and JASSMs can be launched from F-16 aircraft, the first of which the AFU received this summer.

The allies impose restrictions not only on the use of their weapons but also on the military operations of the AFU. For example, the Ukrainian command kept plans for an offensive in the Kursk Region secret from the United States because feared that they might interfere with the operation. According to The Economist, the US already has interfered twice with the AFU's plans: the first time they passed information to the Russians, and the second time they instructed Ukrainians to cancel the operation. With the Kursk Region offense, the Americans were forced to face the fact.

The takeover of part of the Kursk Region may convince the West of Ukraine's ability to conduct successful offensive operations - it hasn't done so since the fall of 2022. An important point: Russia said that the West is behind the AFU offensive, but has done nothing to escalate the war, writes the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). "Arguments that the West, in supporting Ukraine, should take into account Russia's red lines, including limiting the use of its weapons, have become weaker. The West may begin to be less skeptical of Ukraine's resilience and less fearful of escalation by Russia," the analysts said.

"The whole naive, illusory concept of so-called "red lines" on Russia, which reigned in some partners' war assessments, has crumbled these days somewhere near Sudzha," Zelensky said Monday evening.

What happens next

The Ukrainian force in the Kursk Region has three options - try to continue the offensive deep into Russia, consolidate on the captured territory, or retreat into Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky is demanding that AFU commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky continue the offensive and gain "maximum progress," but Syrsky is being cautious and expanding his flanks along the border, says The Economist's source in the Ukrainian General Staff: "Syrsky is not a fool. He knows that rushing forward means risking the whole operation."

"The main risk for Ukraine is that its forces will be stretched too far and cut off [from Ukrainian territory]," agrees CSIS's Mark Kansian. - That would be a military and political disaster." The analyst believes that the Ukrainian forces are now rooting themselves in Kursk Oblast and preparing to hold their ground. The Ukrainians will not advance not only because of the lack of forces but also because of the position of the allies, who fear that going deeper into Russian territory will lead to escalation.

The AFU is capable of holding the defense in the Kursk Region for several weeks or several months: it will depend on what forces the Russian command will transfer from Ukraine, says Kirill Mikhailov, a Russian military expert. At the same time, the Ukrainians will face problems related to the fact that the fighting is taking place on foreign territory. First, Starlink terminals used for communication and the use of drones do not work in Russia. Second, it will be more difficult to support troops with artillery and drones due to the remoteness of the new front line from the border. Third, there are no reliable fortifications there, although the Ukrainians will try to create them before Russia assembles a powerful group.

But there is a silver lining: so far, the Russian army has not massively struck residential buildings with bombs, as it does in Ukraine. "If the Russians do not want to destroy their towns and villages, it will be easier for the AFU to hold the defense of populated areas. Although, when dealing with the Russian army, you can't be sure of anything," Mikhailov said.

"In general, this is quite a difficult, but not impossible task, especially if the AFU comes to favorable defensive lines. An example of how they are trying to do this is the destruction of bridges over the Seim River for subsequent mopping up of the Glushkovsky district, accessing this river and building defenses with reliance on it," the analyst explains.

If the AFU for some reason decides to retreat from the Kursk Region, they will be able to do it quite organized and without heavy losses. "Even the AFU, being in a much more complicated logistical situation in the Kherson region in 2022, was able to withdraw across the Dnieper River and left not as many trophies there as before in the Kharkiv region," Mikhailov says. - I think such a task is quite feasible for the AFU.

If the Ukrainian forces withdraw from Kursk Oblast, it will retain a powerful grouping. It can continue to be a threat anywhere on the border with Russia - in Belgorod, Kursk, or Bryansk Oblasts. It may force the Russians to strengthen the border by moving troops there from other parts of the front. "Of course, this grouping can also be used inside Ukraine," the expert says.