By Taras Kuzio
August 13, 2024
CEPA
Ukraine’s unexpected incursion into Putin’s backyard has shocked and confounded enemies and allies, but what does Kyiv hope for?
A key question is why did Ukraine launch its incursion into Russia now? After all, Western experts widely question the likely effects of the incursion.
The possible election of Donald Trump in November’s US election played an important role in Kyiv’s decision to intervene now, before winter sets in. Ukraine’s government fears that a Trump presidency would cut or end military assistance. A peace plan developed by Trump’s advisers to force Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table is impractical and, it’s feared, would pressure it to give up territory, a step 55% of Ukrainians oppose.
Occupying Russian territory ahead of any peace talks will put Ukraine in a stronger bargaining position and may go some way to reducing Putin’s position in any future peace talks. Ukrainian occupation of Russian territory (currently estimated at about 800 square miles) would give Ukraine some leverage, unlike the disastrous Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 accords in 2014-2015, which covered only the Donbas and ignored Crimea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that not all Ukrainian sovereign territory has to be militarily retaken and some could be returned through diplomacy. Zelenskyy told the Washington Post: “This will give them the leverage they need for negotiations with Russia — this is what it’s all about.” He plans a second peace conference later this year, the first was held on June 15-16 in Switzerland, with Russia invited on this occasion.
Ukrainian forces are digging in and may be using the incursion to build a cordon sanitaire, something like the zone Russia unsuccessfully attempted to create inside Ukraine in May. A belt of Ukrainian-occupied land in the Kursk and Belgorod regions would prevent Russian artillery fire against north-eastern Ukraine (and maybe drone flights) and block supply lines to Russian occupation forces in the Donbas.
Ukraine’s occupation could also provide Russian opposition groups with a base inside Russia. Ukraine’s military intelligence (HRU) supports three armed units — the Freedom of Russia League, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and the Siberian Battalion. Ilya Ponomarev, leader of the Freedom of Russia League, whose Kyiv apartment was targeted by a Russian drone a few weeks ago, has requested Zelenskyy to allow his forces to establish such a liberated zone. Ponomarev believes the war will end only after there are political changes in Russia. “And if there is liberated territory, we could create an alternative power there, and the agenda of political change will turn from hypothetical to real.”
The incursion represents an important boost for both Ukrainian civilian and military morale. Ukrainians were optimistic about the summer 2023 counter-offensive bringing the war to a quick close and became despondent when the counter-offensive failed. In 2022-2023, Russia mobilized 300,000 troops, built three lines of fortifications, and laid thousands of mines while the West drip-fed military aid. Additionally, Ukrainian despondency grew during the six-month Congressional blockage in late 2023-early 2024 of US military aid to Ukraine.
The Kremlin struggles meanwhile to find the right talking points to describe Ukraine’s incursion. Just as the word “war” is not allowed to be used to describe the “special military operation”, so Ukraine’s incursion cannot be called an invasion. The Kremlin is not introducing martial law and instead is calling the Russian response a counter-terrorism operation.
When the governor of the Bryansk region, Aleksandr Bogomaz, told the Russian Security Council the true extent of the territory taken by Ukraine, he was cut off by Putin. Bogomaz reported that Ukrainian forces had advanced 12 km along a 40-km-wide front (the actual battle zone is much bigger.)
Putin, visibly annoyed but intellectually unable to grasp the reasons for the incompetent response, has described Ukraine’s incursion as a “large-scale provocation” and as a terrorist attack led by saboteurs. The Kremlin is demanding, with no hint of irony, that the UN and other international organizations condemn Ukraine’s infringement of Russia’s territorial integrity.
The first response of Russian military and security officers to bad news is to lie. Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov first claimed that Ukrainian forces were only 1,000 strong and then stated that 1,120 Ukrainians had been killed, bringing more ridicule than usual from Russian military bloggers. A report in Kommersant quoted a Russian from Kursk asking: “Why did they lie on TV until the very end? Saying the situation was stable, that it was just a small sabotage group.”
Russian military bloggers are fuming at the incompetence of the Ministry of Defence and are calling for Gerasimov’s removal. They lambasted the military for gathering a large group of troops and vehicles in a convoy near Rylsk which was then hit by a Ukrainian strike. Russian sources suggested that casualties were extremely heavy, possibly over 400.
What does all this mean for Putin? His strongman image has clearly been damaged, not for the first time, but his mafia state responds to weakness like a shark to blood.
The first signs of a new crack in the façade are to be found in the large numbers of Russian soldiers surrendering without a fight, which already number several hundred.
The incursion is forcing Russia to redeploy some of its forces from occupied Ukraine to Kursk and Belgorod, although there’s so far no sign that it has affected Russia’s slow and costly Donbas offensive.
Russia’s need to defend its long border with Ukraine will nonetheless impose planning constraints on its occupation forces. Putin has balked at declaring war on Ukraine, imposing martial law, and transferring to a wartime footing by ordering full mobilization as this would be politically destabilizing. A Kursk resident asked why: “The enemy has entered our territory, and on TV they keep saying, ‘It’s an emergency situation.’ What emergency? When there are foreign tanks on our land, it’s a full-scale war.”
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia is bold and risky, and it may yet fail; that’s the nature of war. But it has already brought benefits. It has shown that the misplaced fear of crossing Russian “red lines” leading to nuclear escalation, which led to the drip-drip supply of military equipment, is a myth and that Ukraine’s battle-hardened military remains a formidable force. As Putin is once again discovering.
Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy of Kyiv, Ukraine. His books Russian Disinformation and Western Scholarship and Fascism and Genocide: Russia’s War Against Ukrainians were recently published by Columbia University Press.