As the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s administration tick away, the fate of a few hundred square miles in western Russia could ultimately decide the future borders of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military captured tracts of territory in the Kursk Oblast in August with a surprise incursion that infuriated the Kremlin. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were immediately marshaled to prepare counterattacks, which have been launched in waves since September.
Approximately 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers are still holding the line in a shrinking carveout of Kursk as President Vladimir Putin mobilizes approximately 50,000 Russian soldiers, 10,000 North Korean mercenaries, and cutting-edge military technology to quash the Ukrainian position.
“[Ukrainians] want to use this territory as a bargaining chip, whereas the Russians, I suspect, will not agree to begin negotiations until they’ve retaken this territory,” said John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“It’s not just about [President-elect Donald Trump] coming into office, although that certainly factors into the calculus,” Hardie told the Washington Examiner. “I think [the U.S.] is trying to surge support to put Ukraine to a better position, understanding that the war seems to be heading to a denouement.”
A member of the Ukrainian General Staff told Reuters on Sunday that Russia has managed to reclaim approximately 40% of the captured territory.
Military sources report that the Ukrainian military initially took approximately 531 square miles of the Kursk region. They remain in control of approximately 309 square miles.
In October, Putin ordered his commanders to remove all Ukrainians from Kursk by Feb. 25 of next year — but that time frame might have been shortened following the U.S. presidential election in November.
Trump is promising to swiftly impose peace between Russia and Ukraine after taking office on Jan. 20. The new presidency is the kind of political reset that could finally force two fatigued countries to bring hostilities to an end.
Granular details regarding how the Trump team plans to end the conflict are not yet known, but the widely discussed prospects of front-line freezes and land swaps mean a Ukraine-controlled Kursk could end up strengthening the negotiating power of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
If a denouement is coming, it will follow a volatile climax.
Tensions escalated between the U.S. and Russia this month after Biden authorized the Ukrainian military to fire long-range missiles into Russian territory. The administration said aiding Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk was a major consideration in the decision.
Ukrainians began firing those U.S. missiles last week, and have now struck military targets in Bryansk, Karachev, Kaluga, Kursk, and elsewhere.
U.S. officials also justified the authorization by pointing to North Korea’s decision to deploy approximately 10,000 personnel from the Korean People’s Army into Kursk, a shocking decision by the rogue state to enter a direct conflict.
Putin ordered the use of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in response to the new threat of U.S.-approved strikes, hitting the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week as a show of power.
Ukraine is also losing ground in a series of tactical engagements by Russian invaders in the Donetsk region. The border oblast is a major target of Russian expansion and currently presents “the most challenging situation” for Ukraine, according to Zelensky.
Some experts are skeptical that peace negotiations are on the horizon, and say the strategic value of the Kursk incursion were more important than any machinations for peace talks after the end of the war.
“I don’t assess it to be the case that the Ukrainians know they’re going to negotiate so they’re going to grab a chunk of territory to increase their political capital,” said George Barros, lead on both the Russia Team and Geospatial Intelligence Team at the Institute for the Study for War. “Because the territory is not going to be difficult for Russia to retake if they really wanted to.”
Instead, Barros believes the Kursk incursion is an attempt to force Putin to divert resources and personnel from other fronts to properly cover the thousand kilometers of under-protected border stretching from Luhansk to neighboring Belarus.
“If the Russians do reinforce this international border the way that they have with the rest of the front line — in such a manner to preclude Ukraine’s ability to conduct another attack like this along that thousand kilometer stretch — that drastically increases Russia’s resourcing requirements for this war in terms of the manpower they need to generate, in terms of the artillery systems that they have to put back there, the frontline fighting forces, et cetera,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Failing to expend the massive amounts of manpower and resources necessary to secure that border leaves an open door for more Ukrainian incursions, possibly on a larger scale.
If peace negotiations were held now, it’s unlikely that any party will come out particularly pleased with their position.
Russia has suffered enormous casualties throughout the conflict, with a U.S. estimate last month approximating 115,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries. What had been imagined as a swift and painless decapitation of Ukrainian sovereignty has become an embarrassing and counterproductive meat grinder.
Ukraine has suffered approximately 57,000 deaths and 250,000 injuries, according to that same estimate.
The mobilization and slaughter of young men has severely handicapped both nations’ economic capabilities and crippled social infrastructure.
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Whether the intense violence being unleashed in Kursk is part of a grander political strategy or simply Ukraine’s most effective pressure point to hurt the Russian war machine, it remains at the center of an unsustainable bloodbath.
“There is no objective right or wrong answer when it comes to this stuff. Historians to this day continue to debate about the Battle of Borodino, the famous battle from the Napoleonic wars,” said Barros. “I suspect that the experts and nerds are gonna keep debating the strategic soundness of Kursk for a long time as well. And there is no objectively correct answer because we’re going to be unpacking this for a long time.”