Kursk Offensive: an Autopsy
- Karl Johansson
- 28 apr.
- 3 min läsning
Did Ukraine accomplish anything in Kursk?
Rumour has it that Russia has completely recaptured Kursk oblast, the region Ukraine used some of its best units to capture in the summer of 2024. At the time I wrote it off as a mistake, and if it is indeed over then I would be hard pressed to come up with a positive thing the Ukrainian army has accomplished in Kursk. So let’s dig in and figure out what to make of the Kursk campaign.
As mentioned, my initial reaction to the news that Ukraine was trying to push into Russia proper was to call it “a really fucking bad idea”. The ostensible reason for the incursion was to put Ukraine in a better negotiating position in the case of a negotiated settlement to the war. That would never work as it presupposes that Russia sees Ukraine as an equal and thus worthy of negotiating with. My sense is that Putin may well agree to make concessions to end the war (as long as they get Crimea and the Donbass) to the US or perhaps to Europe, but they will not grant the implicit prestige of giving concessions to Kyiv.
As such the operation was flawed from first principles, if indeed the point was to gain negotiating leverage. I suspect there were more than one reason for Ukraine to pursue the offensive, but I suspect the most important was to prove Ukraine’s capabilities as a fighting force. As I mention practically every time I write about the war, it is important to remember that Ukraine is smaller and poorer than Russia and that much of its industry has been destroyed or disturbed by the war whereas Russia’s hasn’t. Ukraine needs the West’s support, and the West will not want to pour billions of euros worth of military supplies and weapons into a lost cause. Again, the offensive seems to have failed as Ukraine did not manage to hold its modest slice of Russian territory.
The whole operation seem in retrospect to have been a short lived pr campaign. Of course, we don’t know the counterfactual where Ukraine didn’t launch the Kursk offensive, and Anders Puck Nielsen makes the case that a longer front line is in Ukraine’s interest as it prevents the Russians from amassing too many soldiers at one specific spot on the front line. However, it still seems like a waste to me to commit forces for offensive operations. My core thesis about the war is what I call the ‘defender’s advantage’ whereby it is easier to defend than to attack given current military technologies. As such, Ukraine should strive to be the defender as much as possible as it conserves scarce resources.
I cannot come to any other conclusions than that the Kursk campaign was a complete failure given the publicly available information. There is a chance that future historians will disagree, but it is currently hard to argue that Ukraine stands a better chance of winning the war than they did before the offensive.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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Cover photo by Radiona Raskolnikova from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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