The Russian military’s sluggish response to the Ukrainian surprise attack, and Ukraine’s plans to establish a buffer zone in the Kursk region, should make Western political and military leaders question many of the assumptions they have made about this long-running war.
A former top U.S. military commander and a senior defense analyst with deep ties to Ukraine both said no one should be too quick to draw conclusions from the events of the past two weeks.
Yet since Kiev launched this bold move – its first ground invasion of Russia since the end of World War II – it has upended many assumptions about the course of the conflict.
As this operation unfolds, the question the West must ask itself is: What are Russia’s true capabilities? What capacity does it have to continue a military operation?
Implicit in NATO’s revival and rearmament over the years has been the belief that Russia would not stop at Ukraine but would continue its incursions into places like the Baltic states, such as Latvia, where Canada leads a multinational brigade.
Defense and intelligence experts, mainly from European agencies, have warned darkly that Western countries have just a few years to prepare for a clash with Moscow, and perhaps other autocracies.
But Ukraine, on the defensive in its eastern part, was able to launch a surprise attack on Russia, the purpose of which, until last weekend, had been strategically unclear.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech on Sunday night that his country’s bold military incursion was aimed at creating a buffer zone to prevent further attacks from Moscow across the border.
It was the first time that President Zelenskyy publicly articulated the objectives of the operation, which began on August 6.
The first assumption this operation shattered was that Ukraine would not regain the initiative until next year.
Philip Karber, a lecturer at the National Defense University in Washington, said there had been a passive assumption in the West that Moscow had the upper hand, would continue its offensive in eastern Donbas and had no other strategic options.
“I would tell anyone who will listen to attack where the Russians aren’t,” said Karber, who has close ties to Ukrainian military officials. “Try to catch up with the Russians. Taking the initiative and forcing the Russians into a defensive role would be a good thing.”
Front Burner24:35Would a Ukrainian attack into Russia succeed?
Two and a half years after Russia first invaded, Ukraine launched its boldest counterattack yet: an invasion of the Kursk region. It was the first military incursion beyond Russia’s borders since World War II, drawing Russian forces away from key combat zones in eastern Ukraine. Kiev-based journalist Tim Mack, who publishes the newsletter The Counteroffensive, explains why Ukraine is betting on such a risky strategy and how it could change the course of this protracted war. For the Front Burner transcript, see https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts. [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts]
Some observers have speculated that Ukraine may be trying to pull Russian troops out of Donbas to relieve pressure on Russian forces.
If so, the gamble “never paid off,” Karber said, and he fears the Ukrainians will soon face a determined counterattack on one or both sides of the salient. The Russians’ aim is to encircle the Ukrainians, a favorite tactic of the Soviet Red Army during World War II.
The lesson for NATO is that despite images on social media of Russian conscripts surrendering, the success of this attempt to create a buffer zone is by no means certain.
“The Russian military is formidable,” Carver said.
That may be true, but retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said events in recent months had exposed significant weaknesses in the Russian military and the country’s defense industrial complex.
“We’ll have to find out what Russia’s true capabilities are, what their capabilities are to continue to operate. There are certainly a number of intelligence agencies focused on this issue,” Hodges said.
“I think it’s been clear for some time that Russia does not have the ability to take Ukraine out of the war as long as the West continues to provide even the paltry amounts that we are providing now.”
Many experts warn that the Russian military is rebuilding to make up for the massive losses of equipment and also learning lessons from the devastating number of casualties it has suffered.
“We haven’t seen a lot of major change or innovation on the Russian side,” said Hodges, the former head of U.S. forces in Europe.
“It seems like they’re repeating the same things over and over again, and they’ve certainly lost thousands of experienced soldiers and leaders, and now they’re being replaced by those with less training and experience. Where is the bottom for Russia?”
The Russian conscription in the Kursk region also highlights what Hodges calls a “serious manpower problem,” which he says limits the Russian military’s ability to replace losses of soldiers and equipment on the battlefield.
Hodges said Russia’s defense industry is not producing anything close to the quantities needed and that Moscow appears to be relying on supplies from China, Iran and North Korea.
“I don’t think it’s a sustainable level,” he said.
But for Hodges, one of the biggest takeaways is that Operation Kursk overturned the assumption that battlefield drones made sneak attacks impossible in modern warfare.
“How did Ukraine build up sufficient capability to launch an attack that would have surprised Russia the way it surprised most of us?” he said.
“This really calls into question the theory and theories that you can’t conceal and effectively move large numbers of ground forces with drones. It seems to me that Ukraine has somehow created a counter-drone capability, or bubble, that has allowed them to do things that would have been unthinkable six, eight, 10 months ago.”
