Ukraine’s Surprise Attack On Russian Soil Is Bad Long-Term Strategy

–Analysis–

BERLIN — The Ukrainian army has been retreating for months, having to give up its own territory kilometer by kilometer.

This makes the images from the Russian border region of Kursk, which have been circulating online and on Telegram since Tuesday morning, all the more surprising.

Drone footage shows Russian soldiers raising their hands to surrender. Another clip shows burning Russian tanks that were just about to roll off the transport trailer. Videos from the town of Sudzha, about ten kilometers deep in the Russian hinterland, show destroyed, burnt-out houses and streets full of rubble and debris.

These images prove that the Ukrainian army apparently succeeded in launching a surprise attack on Russian territory. The army leadership in Kyiv has not yet commented on this.

Russia, on the other hand, initially tried to play down the situation. The governor of the Russian region of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, initially confirmed the fighting, but described the situation on the border as “difficult, but controllable”. The Russian Ministry of Defense then spoke of a Ukrainian “unit for sabotage and reconnaissance” that had been “pushed back behind the border” after fighting. But they later revised their official statement and deleted the passage on the allegedly successful defense against the Ukrainian intruders.

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin finally intervened and spoke of a “large-scale, targeted provocation” in the border region during a Security Council meeting in Moscow.

First time on Russian soil

Pro-Ukrainian units, such as the RDK volunteer corps led by Russian neo-Nazis, have attacked and temporarily occupied Russian territory from Ukraine on several occasions in the past. Most recently, RDK fighters seized the border village of Kossino in the Belgorod region for several days last March.

But the main aim of these actions was to expose the Russian dictator Putin and his army. After a few days, the fighters withdrew again. The Ukrainian military did not participate directly in these attacks. It merely supported them with artillery fire and supplied weapons and ammunition.

This time it’s different.

“For the first time, regular Ukrainian troops are fighting on Russian soil,” says Russian military expert and regime critic Jan Matveyev. At least 1,000 soldiers and heavy equipment such as armored personnel carriers are involved in this attack on the Ukrainian side.

Many are now stuck there.

It remains unclear how far their advance has come. At least five border villages are believed to have been occupied. Some videos from the Russian side also show attacks on Ukrainian armored vehicles at least seven kilometers deep in Russian territory.

The depth of the advance, but also the capture of at least two Russian conscripts, shows that the Russian military probably did not expect an attack on this section of the border.

The Kursk administration also failed to warn the inhabitants of the border villages. Many are now stuck there. On Telegram and the Russian network VK, users report that they currently have no contact with relatives living in the villages presumably occupied by Ukrainian units.

In addition, at least 28 people were injured during the fighting in Kursk on Tuesday, according to official information from the Russian administration in Kursk. A doctor and the driver of an ambulance are said to have been killed by a drone attack.

Diverting attention from Donbas losses

The Ukrainian army’s objective with this attack remains unclear at present.

For Russia, the Kursk border region is of great importance. The Kursk nuclear power plant and the Kursk 2 nuclear power plant, which is currently under construction, are located around 70 kilometers from the border. The filling point of the last functioning gas pipeline from Russia to Europe is also located in the border town of Sudzha. Should it fall into the hands of the Ukrainian army, Russia would probably no longer be able to transport gas to its remaining customers in the EU. This means that the Russian army urgently needs to move reserves into the region to prevent this from happening.

The attack near Kursk demonstrates a failure of Russian reconnaissance.

On a military level, the Ukrainian army is trying to divert attention from its own difficult situation in Donbas, says Markus Reisner, military expert and colonel in the Austrian Armed Forces.

“This is understandable and comprehensible, but it doesn’t solve the problems in Toretsk, Pokrovsk and Niu York,” says Reisner. The Russian units have captured further areas here in the past 24 hours.

Nevertheless, the attack near Kursk will keep the Russian army busy, at least in the short term, and once again demonstrates a failure of Russian reconnaissance.

Ukrainian army stretched too thin

Other Western and Ukrainian analysts are also skeptical.

Military expert Robert Lee, Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, U.S., one of Ukraine’s main problems at the moment is the lack of personnel in the brigades that have been fighting on the front line for months and years. Ukraine has only limited resources to reinforce the current attack. Without reinforcements, however, the action is extremely risky. “It is unlikely this operation will have a significant effect on the course of the war,” Lee wrote on X in the aftermath of the attack.

The attack seems to have had at least a sobering effect on the Russian side.

The Ukrainian analyst team Frontline Intelligence put it more drastically. It “borders on mental disability” to deploy an entire brigade to Kursk for an attack, while the situation in Pokrovsk in the Donbas is critical. Russia also has reserves in the neighboring regions that could be deployed quickly.

Regardless of the outcome of the fighting near Kursk, the attack seems to have had at least a sobering effect on the Russian side.

The lessons of Kherson and Izyum have probably been forgotten, wrote former Russian brigade commander Alexander Khodakovsky in his Telegram group with 500,000 followers on Wednesday. Back in the fall of 2022, Russian troops were almost overrun by Ukraine. Afterwards, the Russian army turned the tide of the war back in its favor.