Ukraine Just Had Its Best Week in Months
Ukrainian forces are reportedly pressing deeper into Russia after their surprise offensive in the Kursk region has left Vladimir Putin scrambling to respond in a week of headline-grabbing gains for Kyiv.
Russia has imposed a counterterrorism operation in three of its border regions—the others being in Bryansk and Belgorod—to thwart Ukraine's momentum. It has seen the Ukrainian forces reportedly threatening to seize one regional town over six miles inside Russian territory.
The X (formerly Twitter) account of Ukraine Battle Map said Kyiv may control up to 210 square miles of territory in the deepest Ukrainian advancement since the start of the war, although this has not been independently verified. Newsweek has contacted the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment.
Kyiv has not commented directly about the operation, although President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia should "feel what it has done" to Ukraine. It gives a fillip to Kyiv after weeks of incremental Russian gains, dwindling Ukrainian equipment and troops, and concern about future Western support.
Social-media users made much of Putin's facial expression when informed of the attack. On Friday, he convened a meeting of his Security Council to discuss how to tackle his biggest war challenge since the June 2023 uprising by the Wagner Group mercenaries led by its late founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
"It has certainly been a good week for Ukraine, which has challenged some of the most pessimistic assessments," John Foreman, former British defense attache to Moscow and Kyiv, told Newsweek.
"The incursion will also provide a boost to Ukrainian morale. It has also shown Russia to again be weak, that its much-vaunted intelligence services are incompetent, and that Putin's misrule has hollowed out the state institutions, leading to some frantic emergency meetings about how to respond."
Within Kursk itself, footage has emerged of the destruction of a huge Russian convoy in the village of Oktyabrskoye, near Rylsk, in a suspected attack by U.S.-supplied HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems].
Ukraine's forces have reportedly seized a number of villages in the northwestern region, and are also threatening the regional town of Sudzha. This hosts a key gas facility belonging to Russian energy giant Gazprom.
There are conflicting accounts from pro-invasion Russian military bloggers about the extent of Ukraine's operation. Russia, which has since sent reinforcements including tanks and rocket-launching systems, says that it is "continuing to repel" the incursion.
Foreman said not much is known about the whole operational picture yet, and it is too early to assess the wisdom of Ukraine's move.
"Strategically, I remain concerned that using troops in Kursk potentially weakens Ukrainian defenses elsewhere along the long front line. But if the incursion forces Russia to move its own troops from Donbas to stem the breach, then this could offer Ukraine both respite and the ability to stem the very slow Russian advance."
Ukraine is continuing with other aspects of its fight against Russia. The General Staff in Kyiv said that it had struck a Russian military airfield in the Lipetsk region, which damaged stockpiles of guided bombs and caused detonations.
Within Ukraine itself, Ukrainian forces appeared to hit a Russian training site in the southern Zaporizhzhia region with U.S.-made ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) missiles.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has continued with its strikes against Russian naval targets. A Magura drone destroyed a Russian KS-701 Tunets (Tuna) patrol boat and damaged three other watercraft Thursday near Chornomorske on the northwestern coast of Crimea, according to Ukrainian military intelligence the GUR.
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