Ukraine leaves Kursk — What did they achieve?

Hello,

After seven months, Russia has finally managed to push the Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region. In this video I summarize Ukraine's goals with the mission and discuss whether they achieved what they wanted.

Watch the video here or read a transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Hi, it looks like Ukraine is withdrawing from the Kursk region in Russia and that the Kursk offensive is coming to an end. And of course, it makes sense to sort of take a bigger look at what happened. Was it a success? Was it not? And discuss some of those issues.

As you can maybe see, I'm in Kyiv right now. It's a beautiful day and I decided to go out and do a video in the in the open and get a bit of scenery. It's been quite a hike to find a place where it's reasonably quiet and also there is something to look at. But well, here I am. Unfortunately while I've been here, I've also managed to catch a cold. So my voice may be more nasal than normally, but I hope it will carry me through this video.

The Kursk offensive is important because it was a groundbreaking new step that Ukraine would suddenly take the fight into Russian territory as they did. And when trying to figure out whether it was a good idea or not and if Ukraine achieved what they wanted to, I think we can identify different things that they wanted to get out of it. And I have found four things that I want to highlight here, and then we can discuss each of them and see if they actually managed to get what they wanted.

The first thing they wanted to do was to demonstrate to the Biden administration that it was possible to take the fight onto Russian territory, and it wouldn't lead to dramatic escalation. If we go back to the summer of 2024 when this happened, Ukraine had just been allowed to finally strike Russian territory with Western weapons, but it was only limited to the Kharkiv region and this was a huge point of frustration for the Ukrainians. So they wanted the ability to use Western weapons more liberally on Russian territory.

The Kursk offensive is an example of how they, let's say, interpreted rather freely the limitations they had been given by the Americans to demonstrate that, look, you know, if we do this, if we actually take this step and not just protect ourselves in the Kharkiv region, but actually go in and take a part of Russia, that's not going to lead to the escalation that apparently the Western countries are so afraid of.
So it was a way to demonstrate to the Western countries that it's not that dangerous to actually give Ukraine more weapons. And it was also done in connection with the Ukrainian plan for victory that shortly after the Kursk offensive, they started promoting in different capitals in Western Europe and in the United States.

I don't think this really panned out the way that Ukraine had hoped for. They had hoped that this would lead to the Biden administration taking a final bold step now that Biden would not be running for reelection. Go in and finally decide this war and end it before the election.

That did not happen at all. On the contrary, it seems that Biden got really angry with the Ukrainians about it and doubled down on this principle of not giving Ukraine all the weapons they would need to actually decisively put the Russians under pressure. So I think we can say, that part of it didn't really work out as the Ukrainians had hoped for.

The second thing was to take a lot of prisoners of war and especially the conscripts that were in the Kursk region, for two reasons. First, there were many of them. They were not prepared. So it would be easy to take many persons to war. And the second is that because these were Russian conscripts, then they would be more valuable to exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war that had been held by Russia. Ukraine wanted to use this as leverage to get especially the defenders from Mariupol out from Russian captivity. And they managed to get at least a quite significant number of those Mariupol defenders out in exchange for these Russian conscript soldiers. So I think in that sense, we can say, OK, on that note, that that was a success.

Then there was also an issue of wanting to use this as a diversion operation to force the Russians to reallocate forces from other sectors of the front line, especially in eastern Ukraine in Donetsk, and to the Kursk region. Because it would be a bigger priority, was the Ukrainian assessment here, for Putin to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk than it would be to capture Donetsk.

I don't think this worked as quickly as the Ukrainians had hoped and anticipated. They did expect that Russia would sooner be forced to reallocate forces. And Putin went the other way. He tried to double down on eastern Ukraine and he underestimated how many resources it would actually take to push the Ukrainians out.

So I think it took a longer time. But in the end, we can say that this has worked. Russia has been forced to increase over time the amount of resources that they use in Kursk. And this has also gone to the extent that in the end they had to accept weakening the front line in Donetsk. And we've seen Ukraine actually making progress there over the last month. So in that sense, I think we can say that, well, as a diversion operation, it worked slower than the Ukrainians had hoped for. But it worked in the end.

And then finally, there is the thing about using Kursk as a bargaining chip in negotiations. This is also something that has been mentioned a lot. I think this has been somehow misunderstood in the West that, you know, that this is something Ukraine could use in negotiations to say, well, if you give us some territory back, then you might get Kursk back.

I don't think that's how it was really intended. I think it was more intended as something that would make it difficult for Putin to play the 'let's freeze the front line' card when Trump took office. Right now, there is a blame game going on. I've talked about this in other videos about how both Ukraine and Russia are eager to make it look like they really want peace so that Donald Trump will punish the other side for the fact that the war continues. And this was a way of ensuring that the Russians couldn't really play the ceasefire card as long as the Ukrainians were still present in Kursk. And I think we can say that this has also worked out. We're well past the election now and there is a different dynamic going on now.

So I think overall, I will say that Kursk has been mostly successful. Not the sweeping success that I think they'd hoped for, that it would convince Biden to really ramp up the weapons deliveries to give the Russians a final blow before the American election. But on the other points, I think it's been reasonably successful.

It was never the point that Ukraine would stay in Kursk forever. So it was also always a question about timing of when to leave. And at this point, it's probably fine that Ukraine withdraws in the sense that Kursk has lost much of its rationale. It has diverted resources. It did prevent Russia from playing the ceasefire card just after Trump took office and those things. And they did get some of their Mariupol defenders out of prison.

The withdrawal has not been perfect. There has been equipment left behind by the Ukrainian withdrawing Ukrainian soldiers, but overall it's been fairly OK. It hasn't been a disastrous withdrawal. There's been some talk about thousands of Ukrainian soldiers being surrounded. Putin has talked about that. Donald Trump has talked about that. Not at all. That has not been the case at all. It's misinformation. And I think the big story here is really that Donald Trump is once again repeating Russian misinformation.

If you want to understand why Donald Trump might be doing that, then I will really recommend Vlad Vexler's new video on why it is that Donald Trump is so submissive to Putin and why he, on the contrary, is bullying the Ukrainians. It's a fascinating video. But I think that's the real story about that: that the American president said something that was a lie.

But overall, the withdrawal has been OK. I also think there's been a lot of discussion about whether it was related to the fact that the American aid and the American sharing of intelligence had stopped when the Russian Kursk offensive started. And I will say, that is probably not the reason why the Russians have been successful in this final push. For once, the buildup has taken longer than the period that the American intelligence sharing was off. And also, the Ukrainians have a pretty good intelligence service themselves. So they would notice these things, especially when there is suddenly troop concentrations very close to the front line. That is not something they would necessarily need American satellite information or something like that to figure out. They would see it coming.

So I think overall, the Ukrainians saw this Russian push coming. And I think they've actually been capitalizing on it as well by starting counterattacks in the Donetsk region. That might be why we have seen at least some Ukrainian successes there.

All right. That was my status on the Kursk offensive. As I'm recording this, the Ukrainians are still holding on to some of the areas very close to the border, but that might be ending soon. So I think this is probably it. And then it will be interesting to see what will happen next.

Thanks for watching.