Ukraine’s Gamble against Russia, War Tactics Without Achievements

Eviralnews, the American website “Hill” criticizes Ukraine’s war tactics, which have not achieved anything for this country, and writes in a report that the surprise invasion of Ukraine in August may have apparently achieved another goal, including hitting the image of Russia’s power. Destroying military assets and capturing territory and prisoners for negotiating leverage, but failing the more important goal of distracting Russian forces, has opened the door to criticism of Kiev’s military gamble, especially as Russia continues to advance along the war’s 600-mile eastern front. does

Russian forces have continued to advance into Ukraine, seizing large swaths of its territory in the past month and closing in on the key city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was expressing his frustration at Ukraine’s attack on Kursk a few weeks ago, spoke of his military’s progress while visiting a school. He said: “The enemy did not achieve the main task he had set for himself, which is to stop our offensive in Donbass. “We haven’t had such an offensive speed in Donbass for a long time.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky argues that the Kursk offensive is a key part of Kiev’s strategy and will be included in the “victory plan” he plans to present to the United States this month.

In a video speech on Sunday, Zelensky claimed that Russia’s repeated attacks on cities across Ukraine “proved the correctness of our tactics, especially in Kursk.” “We must take the war back to where it originated, inside Russia,” he said. And not only in the border areas. »

But many Ukrainian civilians and soldiers have publicly questioned the Kursk offensive at a time when the Russian military is using its forces to make rapid advances on the front lines, particularly in Donetsk. Moscow plans to take over the rest of the region, along with Luhansk, to consolidate control over the Donbass, Ukraine’s industrial heartland.

Mariana Bezohla, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said that Ukrainian commanders have deployed “zombie squads” and inexperienced troops to defend Pokrovsk. “Now we have more consequences,” he wrote on Facebook last week. More lives and more territories.”

Russia’s capture of Pokrovsk in Ukraine would help Russian forces by cutting off a critical supply line that Ukraine uses to defend its front-line forces. Also, this process helps Russia advance towards Donetsk and threaten Ukrainian positions in the southeast of Ukraine. In recent days, Ukrainian authorities have ordered the mass evacuation of Pokrovsk, which had a population of about 60,000 before the war. Russian forces are now only a few miles from the city.

“George Beebe”, one of the officials of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Governance, said that it is still too early to comment on the Kursk operation, but “it seems that this process is going towards failure.” “Contrary to predictions, the Russians haven’t diverted too many troops from the front line in Ukraine, if anything, and they’ve stepped on the gas pedal from that side,” he said.

“There seems to be a lot of skepticism about what this invasion is going to do, and I think there are growing concerns that it was a mistake,” the researcher added. It seems that Russia has now accepted the reality of Ukrainian forces in Kursk. The Institute for War Studies assessed this week that Putin is trying to preserve Russian momentum in Pokrovsk at the expense of delaying the clearing of Kursk.

George Beebe said Russia has also turned the Kursk operation into an opportunity to destroy Ukrainian troops and armored personnel carriers, who have suffered heavy casualties in Russian territory. “The Ukrainians are simply losing more men, losing more armor, losing more weapons and using more ammunition,” he said. And from Russia’s point of view, everything is fine. So I don’t think they are in a hurry to end this invasion.”

In an interview with NBC News this week, Zelensky claimed that Russia had diverted 60,000 troops from Ukraine, but did not specify where they had withdrawn.

Meanwhile, Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said that Ukraine’s territorial occupation in Kursk is only six thousandths of the total area of ​​Russia.

“This operation is a tactical success, but not a major strategic achievement,” he said in an email.

Walt said the war “will be primarily determined by what happens in Ukraine, not by the invasion of Kursk.”

“Indeed, this short-term Ukrainian success may ultimately be seen as a strategic mistake if it weakens Ukraine’s defenses in the east and allows Russia to make faster gains there,” he added. “Russia can allow Ukraine to occupy a small part of its territory, knowing that it can later regain full control.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution, said: “Ukraine is looking to use the Kursk territory for negotiations and has made clear before that that it does not want to try to retake most of its territory through a counteroffensive. »

“There is absolutely no way that Putin would do a 1,000-to-1 deal,” he said, comparing the Russian-held territories in Ukraine and the Kursk territory held by Kiev.

O’Hanlon added: “There is definitely a cost to the Kursk operation, by moving troops into Kursk at a time when Ukrainian units are suffering from a lack of weapons and manpower. “There is no doubt that there is a weakness. They (Ukrainians) should have really tried to add new forces in some ways to strengthen their defense, not to attack.”

According to Institute for War Studies data analyzed by AFP, Russian forces have made huge gains in Ukraine since the beginning of the Kursk operation, taking control of 184 square miles of Ukrainian territory in August, the largest increase since October 2022.

In addition to Pokrovsk, the cities of Tortsk and Chasiv Yar, also in Donetsk, are witnessing Russian advances. Both could be effective in the Kremlin’s goal of capturing the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and then the rest of the eastern region. The speed of Russia’s advance exposes the weakness of front-line positions in Ukraine, which has struggled for months to stop Russian forces and is getting nowhere due to a lack of manpower. Ukraine has lowered the military age, but has not yet been able to replace fresh soldiers on the battlefield.