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As far as we can tell, the line of engagement has not yet stabilized. It is not known for certain how many troops Russia and Ukraine are using in the operation. The names of a good dozen Russian and Ukrainian units, various brigades and divisions, appear in various reports, creating the impression of a large-scale strategic operation. These names most likely indicate, rather, that separate elements are involved – a battalion or even a company from a specific brigade, but not the entire unit. There is even more uncertainty about the reserves of the attacking Ukrainian troops, if there are any at all. As for Russian reserves, the Ukrainian raid into Kursk Region demonstrated that there are none, which we shall discuss below.
Moving away from positional warfare
It would be premature to claim that the Ukrainian raid into Kursk Region marks a turning point in the war, but it has certainly changed the course of the fighting. In early August, the sides seemed fully mired in a positional conflict. In Donetsk Region, Russian troops were advancing extremely slowly, suffering heavy losses, while their offensive in Kharkiv Region had virtually petered out.
It seemed that both the Ukrainian and Russian commanders realized that they had reached a strategic impasse, which was clearly described in November 2023 by Ukraine’s former top commander, General Valery Zaluzhny: “just like in World War I, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.” The Russian military leadership apparently realized that the war in Ukraine had begun to resemble the Great War, with endless attacks on well-fortified enemy positions.
The man responsible for the combat readiness of Russian troops, General Ivan Buvaltsev, even stated that “contemporary trends… show that combat training has shifted, mostly to the level of “squad-platoon-company.” This means that the Russian command was not planning to conduct operations in larger units, like brigades, divisions and armies, in the foreseeable future.
The Kremlin, overconfident that Kyiv was concentrating on holding out in the Donbas, certainly did not expect a thrust into Kursk Region. This area is part of the responsibility of the North army group, drawn from Leningrad Military District troops. It has been tied up in heavy fighting in Kharkiv Region since May.
A reserve group, the 44th Army Corps, was supposed to be formed in Kursk Region, which in reality did not materialize, as some men from the new unit were probably sent to Kharkiv Region to compensate for losses on that front.
At the time of the Ukrainian incursion, there were only scattered units in Kursk Region, mainly conscripts, FSB border guards and Chechen Akhmat forces. They did not have heavy weapons, and there were no plans to use these men in combat. Though some defensive fortifications had been erected, there was no one to defend the region.
The Russian command likely assumed that the US and other Western countries, fearing an escalation of the conflict, had forbade Kyiv from bringing the war to internationally recognized Russian territory, and that Ukraine would listen.
Kyiv was looking at the problems it would face in a war of attrition: an inevitable decline in the fighting spirit of the troops and the nation’s readiness to resist the aggressor, a rise in defeatist sentiments and greater criticism of the country’s political leadership. Of no small importance is, of course, the latent irritation of Western partners (whether justified or not) that their significant military aid has yet to yield the expected results on the battlefield.
This seems to be why the Ukrainian leadership decided to shake up, if not the military situation, then the military-political backdrop. The decision reflects the view that the most important factor for victory is not general superiority in resources that can be mobilized, but the ability to covertly carry out mobilization in a short time for a specific military operation.
On the eve of the raid into Kursk Region, the Ukrainian command had managed to concentrate up to 10,000 soldiers near the border secretly, under the pretext of preparing to repel a possible Russian invasion into Ukraine’s Sumy Region. As the art of war dictates, a very small circle of army officials was involved in the planning. The troops knew nothing about the objectives of the operation. To avoid leaks, Ukraine’s Western partners were kept in the dark. This is what makes the Kursk operation so different from the first advertised and subsequently failed summer offensive in 2023.
The raid into Kursk Region was well planned and flawlessly executed. Just in the first days of the operation, Ukrainian troops had penetrated 10-15 kilometers into Russian territory, encountering virtually no resistance, and occupied several dozen settlements, including Sudzha, the district capital.
This yielded the expected military-political results. The morale of the troops and the country as a whole was bolstered, and criticism of the military command died down. The Ukrainians had something to present to their wavering allies.
Yet these are the only Ukrainian successes in Kursk. The advance has slowed down. The military goals of the operation – like controlling certain areas, settlements or things that are important for further progress – remain unclear.
The only military objective that was officially stated was to force the Russian command to transfer forces from Donetsk Region and slow down the Russian offensive there. Apparently, that has not been achieved. The statement of Zelensky that the Russian command was forced to remove 60,000 troops from the front in Ukraine to transfer them to Kursk Region has yet to be confirmed by any other sources.
What’s next?
The main question that remains unanswered is whether the Ukrainian command has the necessary reserves to continue the operation that got off to such a successful start. In early September, there were reports that, despite criticism from the Ukrainian press, Kyiv had managed to almost double the number of soldiers amid a new mobilization law passed in May. If this is true, then in 3-4 months the Ukrainian command should have at least a dozen military brigades at its disposal to continue the fighting. It just needs to defend Donetsk Region for the 4-5 months necessary to train the mobilized men. If it is true, then the operation in Kursk Region is a diversion and has a clear military goal.
The famous Brusilov offensive comes to mind – perhaps the Russian army’s best operation during World War I. It was carried out in 1916 and entailed the capture of large swaths of Western Ukraine. The enemy suffered gigantic losses, in the hundreds of thousands of soldiers. But due to a lack of reserves and material resources, the offensive stalled. Will the Kursk offensive not have the same result? After all, if we continue the analogy, the enormous losses that Brusilov’s troops suffered in the offensive would a year later creat exhaustion with the war and internal unrest in the country and army.
In search of reserves
Kursk shows that Ukraine’s defeat in a war of attrition is not a foregone conclusion.
The only potential explanation is that the Russian command does not currently have the necessary number of troops. It simply lacks strategic reserves. If this is the case, this casts doubt on official reports of a thousand volunteers signing up each day.
In 2023, 540,000 men signed contracts with the Ministry of Defense, followed by another 190,000 in the first half of 2024. The question is: where are these people? Are the losses as big as Western analysts believe, at half a million killed and wounded?
It is quite possible that the actual recruitment numbers are significantly lower than officially stated. A dearth of volunteers is also indicated by the fact that regional authorities are forced to constantly increase the bonuses they pay for signing up. For example, in Moscow and St Petersburg, each new recruit gets about RUB 2 million. It might be the case that the number of Russians willing to risk their lives for money has sharply declined.
The only way to significantly increase the number of Russian troops for the war is forced mobilization. Vladimir Putin has just signed a decree expanding the armed forces by 180,000 servicemen to 1.5 million. Though he cited as the reason the formation of two military districts – Moscow and Leningrad – instead of a single Western one, this seems like a plausible pretext for significantly increasing the number of draftees taken during the upcoming autumn conscription drive, scheduled to start on October 1. Or even for another “partial mobilization.”
