Terrible though it is, Ukraine’s forced withdrawal from Kursk makes peace negotiations with Russia more likely. Indeed had Putin not been able to drive the Ukrainian army out, he is unlikely to have even contemplated peace talks. He would have demanded that Kyiv pull out of his territory first. That would have been a huge political challenge for Zelensky, on top of all the others he faces: the idea of voluntarily withdrawing from conquered Russian land while at the same time ceding large areas of his own country to the enemy.
Putin has the whip hand, and one of the strategic objectives of the Kursk offensive – gaining a bargaining chip for future peace negotiations – could never realistically have paid off. General Oleksandr Syrsky, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian army, now knows that, which is why in recent days he has been talking about preserving as many of his soldiers’ lives as possible rather than fighting to hold his ground.
Kyiv had also hoped that driving its troops into Russian territory would force Putin to deploy substantial forces to recover it, thus easing pressure on the front lines in Donbas. It didn’t work out that way either. Instead Russia contained and assaulted the Kursk salient with limited forces and called up North Korean troops to make up the numbers. Meanwhile, of course, Ukraine had to find the forces to attack into Kursk and, with overall manpower shortages, they had to come from the battlefront. We can’t calculate the net military effect of that. Since the initial offensive in Kursk began last August Russia has continued to advance in the Donbas, albeit slowly, but it is possible that Ukraine might have lost even more of its territory there if it weren’t for Kursk.
Although battles and wars are sometimes won by high stakes gambles, the strategic wisdom of the Kursk offensive was always questionable. It may be that in Kyiv’s high command, political rather than military considerations dominated the decision making. When the operation began, the US election was looming very close and there was the need to strengthen support in both the Republican and Democratic camps as well as in Europe.
Since the failed counter offensive in 2023, Western hopes that Ukraine might prevail had sharply fallen away, and after that, much political bandwidth was diverted to the Middle East. At Kursk, Kyiv hoped to galvanise international support through replicating the optimism created by successful counter attacks around Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022. With this bold new offensive Zelensky wanted to again show the world that Ukraine was still in the fight and could win, if only provided the tools to do so.
But by then it was too late. Governments in the US and Europe had given up on Ukraine being able to push the Russians out and were focused only on some kind of negotiated settlement. That sorry state of affairs had come to pass due to their own timorousness since the war began. Following Putin’s invasion in February 2022, fearing Putin’s wrath, Joe Biden and his European counterparts had supplied Ukraine with barely sufficient military resources to defend itself but nowhere near enough to win. Even Kursk, the first invasion of Russian territory since the Second World War, could not change that.
Self-evidently, it is vital to show strength ahead of negotiations and the West’s failure over three years to adequately bolster Ukraine’s fighting capability has led us to the opposite position. The defeat at Kursk is a tragic allegory for the dire situation that the country now faces.
Terrible though it is, Ukraine’s forced withdrawal from Kursk makes peace negotiations with Russia more likely. Indeed had Putin not been able to drive the Ukrainian army out, he is unlikely to have even contemplated peace talks. He would have demanded that Kyiv pull out of his territory first. That would have been a huge political challenge for Zelensky, on top of all the others he faces: the idea of voluntarily withdrawing from conquered Russian land while at the same time ceding large areas of his own country to the enemy.
Putin has the whip hand, and one of the strategic objectives of the Kursk offensive – gaining a bargaining chip for future peace negotiations – could never realistically have paid off. General Oleksandr Syrsky, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian army, now knows that, which is why in recent days he has been talking about preserving as many of his soldiers’ lives as possible rather than fighting to hold his ground.
Kyiv had also hoped that driving its troops into Russian territory would force Putin to deploy substantial forces to recover it, thus easing pressure on the front lines in Donbas. It didn’t work out that way either. Instead Russia contained and assaulted the Kursk salient with limited forces and called up North Korean troops to make up the numbers. Meanwhile, of course, Ukraine had to find the forces to attack into Kursk and, with overall manpower shortages, they had to come from the battlefront. We can’t calculate the net military effect of that. Since the initial offensive in Kursk began last August Russia has continued to advance in the Donbas, albeit slowly, but it is possible that Ukraine might have lost even more of its territory there if it weren’t for Kursk.
Although battles and wars are sometimes won by high stakes gambles, the strategic wisdom of the Kursk offensive was always questionable. It may be that in Kyiv’s high command, political rather than military considerations dominated the decision making. When the operation began, the US election was looming very close and there was the need to strengthen support in both the Republican and Democratic camps as well as in Europe.
Since the failed counter offensive in 2023, Western hopes that Ukraine might prevail had sharply fallen away, and after that, much political bandwidth was diverted to the Middle East. At Kursk, Kyiv hoped to galvanise international support through replicating the optimism created by successful counter attacks around Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022. With this bold new offensive Zelensky wanted to again show the world that Ukraine was still in the fight and could win, if only provided the tools to do so.
But by then it was too late. Governments in the US and Europe had given up on Ukraine being able to push the Russians out and were focused only on some kind of negotiated settlement. That sorry state of affairs had come to pass due to their own timorousness since the war began. Following Putin’s invasion in February 2022, fearing Putin’s wrath, Joe Biden and his European counterparts had supplied Ukraine with barely sufficient military resources to defend itself but nowhere near enough to win. Even Kursk, the first invasion of Russian territory since the Second World War, could not change that.
Self-evidently, it is vital to show strength ahead of negotiations and the West’s failure over three years to adequately bolster Ukraine’s fighting capability has led us to the opposite position. The defeat at Kursk is a tragic allegory for the dire situation that the country now faces.