By Marc Champion
One week after Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kursk region of Russia, we still have a blurry picture of what is happening on the ground and know even less about the objectives of this operation. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The Russians may have to guess, making their reaction more challenging.
Many analyses have been written about what the objectives might be for Ukraine’s supreme commander, General Oleksandr Syrsky, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Speculations range from repeating Syrsky’s successful attack in Kharkiv in 2022 to boost sagging morale domestically, to forcing Russia to divert forces to protect its borders or to seize land to hold as leverage in future negotiations.
Kiev is likely to have many parallel objectives and is likely to pursue whatever works best as events unfold. It may take weeks or months before we know whether this was a brilliant, high-risk maneuver that changed the course of a war increasingly played with Russia’s advantages in manpower and munitions, or a disaster that wasted thousands of experienced Ukrainian soldiers from already strained defensive lines, only to squander them on a futile plan.
There is, however, at least one conclusion that Western leaders should have already drawn, as such an attack was inevitable in a war between states. The only surprise is that it came so late – two and a half years after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – and this is primarily due to Western restrictions on the use of Western weapons within internationally recognized borders of Russia. Now Ukrainian troops are driving American-made Bradley fighting vehicles into Russia.
It is unreasonable to treat these borders as sacred and inviolable from the moment Putin sent troops to cross them. At that point, they ceased to be agreed borders and became part of the battlefield. Russia shows no hesitation in sending Iranian and North Korean missiles and rockets, let alone its own, into Ukraine from deep within Russian territory, and there is no reason for it to be immune from corresponding attacks. It was Putin’s choice, not Zelensky’s or NATO’s, to turn Russian territory into a war zone.
Ukrainians often point out that the Kremlin’s greatest strategic success since the beginning of the invasion was convincing the U.S. and its NATO allies that if they did not regulate the supply of weapons to Kiev, Putin would unleash a nuclear attack. Whether this strategy was necessary is a contradictory fact, making it impossible to answer with certainty.
Just last week, Ukraine dispatched significant forces to take control of territories beyond international borders, blew up a major airport and a munitions warehouse near Lipetsk, a city nearly 400 kilometers inside Russia, sunk a modern Kilo-class submarine, and received its first F-16 fighter jets. Dozens of other so-called red lines have been crossed since the onset of Russian hostilities, even as Germany dared to send only helmets to help Kiev’s defense. Putin has yet to make the decision to use nuclear weapons because it would do him much more harm than good.
The U.S., however, continues to impose some limits on the use of Ukrainian weapons. Among these are restrictions on firing the ATACMS missiles donated by the Americans to Kiev, surface-to-surface missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers, into Russia. With Ukraine already free to use the UK’s Storm Shadow cruise missiles with similar range to strike distant airports and oil refineries with its own drones, it is certainly time to allow the use of ATACMS to strike any military target that supports Russia’s war effort.
All this reinforces the argument, particularly if you want to honestly argue in favor of negotiations to end the war. No one can seriously claim that Ukraine aims to conquer and annex any part of Russia, as even holding the recently seized strip of cross-border territory until potential peace talks would be a very difficult endeavor. However, the quickest way to force Putin to sit at the negotiating table for a lasting peace may well be for Kiev to demonstrate that as long as he continues his invasion, Russia, too, will never be safe from attacks or capable of flourishing as it should.
“We are recording all locations from which the Russian army launches strikes, including the Belgorod region, the Kursk region, and other areas,” Zelensky stated in a national address on Sunday evening, which was posted on social media. This includes, he said, 2,000 strikes with missiles, drones, artillery, and mortars in the Kursk region. “It is absolutely fair for Ukraine to respond to this terrorism in the necessary way to stop it.”
Zelensky clarified that he was referring to long-range missiles to hit Russian facilities and supply chains and called on allies to lift their remaining restrictions. I have yet to hear a compelling argument as to why it is wrong for him to make this request or why it should not be granted.
Translation – Editing: Stathis Ketitzián