Zelensky's Kursk incursion could be playing into Putin's hands

Vladimir Putin's sluggish response to the first foreign occupation of Russian territory since World War II suggests he is more focused on the opportunities Volodymyr Zelensky's incursion into Kursk may present elsewhere on the front line.

Putin and Ukraine's allies were caught off guard by Kyiv's push into the region on August 6 leading to the capture of around 500 square miles, 100 settlements and 594 prisoners of war according to Zelensky's commander Oleksandr Syrski on Tuesday.

But Ukraine faces awkward questions over Moscow's advances toward the Donetsk city of Pokrovsk. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Wednesday that Russian forces continue to make "significant tactical advances" southeast of the city which is a critical road and rail hub for Ukrainian troops.

The open-source pro-Ukrainian Conflict Intelligence Team said the same day that the situation in the Pokrovsk direction was "increasingly dangerous" for Kyiv's forces.

Despite the first capture by foreign forces of Russian territory since Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa in 1941, a second "Battle of Kursk" unfolding eight decades after the first in 1943 sees Putin focusing instead on the front line city in Donetsk.

Putin did not send forces into Kursk from the eastern front in Ukraine to blunt the advance, but has used conscripts in a counter-invasion force—although this has been denied by the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Moscow's forces in the east of Ukraine remain intact.

"Putin is not diverting forces from the axis attacking toward Pokrovsk," said Nico Lange, chief of staff for Germany's defense ministry until 2022.

"He is trying to use forces from somewhere else, or he is just saying, 'OK let's deal with Kursk later—but now Pokrovsk is more important," he told Newsweek.

Lange, non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), said it may take months to judge whether Zelensky's attack on Kursk has been a success and while the Kyiv operation looks well thought out, if the intention was to push into Russia to divert Putin's troops from Pokrovsk, "that is not working yet."

Residents in Kursk are angered by authorities' response to the incursion but Kremlin-controlled media have framed the attack as evidence of Kyiv's aggressive intentions. This could further justify Putin's invasion, manage expectations about a response and create a rallying around the flag.

"Putin doesn't care about Russian people, and he doesn't care about a few villages in Kursk Oblast," Lange said. "Putin has decided not to even declare that there is an incursion in Kursk. He just says there is a difficult situation.

"Because he is just saying there's a difficult situation, he is not mounting pressure on himself that he has to do something about it."

Ukraine's incursion has already generated some dividend for Putin according to Nicolò Fasola, author of Reinterpreting Russia's Strategic Culture: The Russian Way of War.

"For the incursion to be effective, Ukrainian personnel and military hardware had to be diverted from (Ukraine's) southeast, which in turn allowed Russian forces to score territorial gains across Donbas," he told Newsweek, referring to the eastern Ukrainian region mostly controlled by Moscow that includes Donetsk Oblast.

But it was "unlikely" that the territorial gains will turn the tide of the war and the continued push for Pokrovsk could divert domestic attention away from Kursk and aid the Kremlin's rhetoric about operations in the Donbas region.

"At a minimum, it provides Russia with more advanced positions from which to conduct future operations, and puts more distance between its rear and front line," added Fasola, research fellow at the University of Bologna.

The Kursk incursion may have reshaped the battlefield but Zelensky's diversion of some of his most capable troops risks overextension.

"Ukraine took a gamble in Kursk by committing its limited reserves and also pulling various units off the line to participate in the operation," said John Hardie, deputy director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' (FDD) Russia Program. "Time will tell whether it was successful."

The attrition of Ukrainian reserves is "definitely a risk, especially if those units were cut off or circled," he told Newsweek.

So far there have not been high Ukrainian losses of equipment in Kursk but "the losses will grow as time goes on, obviously," Hardie said.

"The risk for Ukraine is not only those units not available for defense elsewhere to act as a stabilization force in Donetsk," he said. "They could be attrited and their manpower force availability problem can get worse."

While not overtly stated by Kyiv, the objectives of the incursion appear to be linked to potential leverage in possible peace negotiations, as much as creating a buffer zone inside Russian territory.

Zelensky said on Tuesday that the operation would be one aspect of a four-part "victory plan" to be presented to President Joe Biden and the U.S. presidential candidates next month, although there are doubts over whether the operation would help any future peace negotiations.

"Current territorial gains are too limited to counterbalance territorial losses in Donbas at the negotiating table," said Fasola.

Other factors shaping these hypothetical negotiations include who will be in the White House making decisions on continued aid for Kyiv, as well as how well Ukraine can replenish its troops through a mobilization bill that was passed in April.

But Russia is also facing huge losses and Bloomberg reported this month that this might spur Putin to consider a new draft announcement by the end of the year.

"When looking at the next six months, much hinges on the U.S. election and both Russian and Ukrainian mobilization efforts," Zev Faintuch, senior intelligence analyst at security firm Global Guardian told Newsweek.

"We should see the fruits of Kyiv's mobilization bill by the winter, and we'll see if the Kursk offensive engenders a wider Russian mobilization," he said.

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