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[Last week JKF asked in the Transnational Thursday thread if the salient was defensible. That's not the quite the same question, but response I wrote had enough overlap to be relevant.
Per JKF-
To which my response was-
Kinda / sorta / it doesn't need to be to serve the purpose of overall defense. The issue isn't the specific-holdability of this specific terrain, but rather what the Russians would need to re-secure it, particularly since while they have 'more resources', they don't necessarily have more of the right kind of resources to counter a mobile defense without compromising the offense in other sectors.
In military doctrines, there are generally two main types of defense: positional defense, and mobile defense.
A positional defense is what you generally think of in the Ukraine War over the last 2.5 years- trench lines, artillery duels, relatively static air defense needs and placements. This has its advantages for the defender in increasing cost-ratio, but disadvantages in that the opponent gets to choose when and where exactly to the attack. Similarly, it has its disadvantages for the attacker, but it also has it's advantages in some respects. Because it's mutual trenchworks, counter-attacks face the same general disadvantage, even as the general attack can establish overlapping mitigation measures for things like counter-drone / anti-air / artillery / etc, which can let the participant move forces in 'relatively' safe conditions. Positional defenses are costly, but generally more one way in favor of the larger party.
This is what Russia has reorganized its military to fight over the last two years. Tanks are used to support attacks on specific positions, mass concentrations of artillery forces and depots to support suppressive fires on static positions, etc.
A mobile defense, on the other hand, is a far more aggressive form of counter-force defense which terrain is given up for time / opportunities to maneuver and strike where most advantageous, with the goal of targetting enemy forces so that they are unable to advance / must retreat and reconsolidate, preserving the defender's control of key territory further behind and having out-sized effects on forces. It is harder to pull off in both terms of contexts and skill level, but it also has the potential to be even more efficient in terms of cost-to-the-defender, as the defender can be fighting over ground that the other side doesn't already have prepared with the sort of over-lapping systems of artillery / AA / counter-drone EW that could mitigate the force effectiveness, as only the stuff that you can carry with you can move with you. The defender can thus be more proactive in choosing when and where to counter-attack, avoid fights over specific terrain that is unfavorable, and because the attacker has to press the advance- and thus leave the advantages of positional defenses- to pursue.
The issue with mobile defenses is that you need to give up terrain for time and space for when to counter-attack the enemy force. This could lead to retreating until the war is lost, or you have to go into positional defenses you can't abandon. It also requires the political capital for a leader to be willing to tell his nation 'no, we're not going to fight over all the terrain.'
But if- hypothetically- you could get a lot of the enemy's terrain to maneuver through, which you wouldn't pay a significant political cost to give up...
This is where we start hitting the defensive context of this offensive. It's not that the surprisingly rapid advance of Ukrainian forces means a new static front line to be defended in Russia. It's that the fact that Ukrainian forces were able to maneuver so quickly forward, also means they will be able to maneuver backwards, and laterally, and thus have the capacity for a mobile defense. And because this is so far from the Russian-Ukrainian front lines, the Russians have to leave their static position setups and try to maneuver- and in doing so, open themselves up for attacks that wouldn't be possible against forces under the defensive-position envelopes.
We've already seen some of this happen. There was reportedly a HIMARs attack in Kursk that destroyed a column of Russian forces in transit. This would simply not have been possible in a normal static defense, because (a) the units wouldn't have been consolidated, (b) would have likely been in defensive positions, and (c) the area would have been under various AA/missile-defense envelopes. Similarly, there were reports of Russian platoons surrendering after being flanked and enveloped. The point isn't that the Russians are in a catastrophic defeat- the point is that the same sort of expenditure of Ukrainian resources wouldn't have achieved these sort of results if just pushed into the positional defenses.
What this means for the Russians is that they need to bring in maneuver forces of sufficient capacity / protective capabilities to push back the Ukrainians, and that this requirement increases with time. The more the Ukrainians are able to advance, the more terrain they have with which to maneuver and trade away- and the more they have, the more Russian resources are required to contain the pocket.
The issue for the Russians is that they don't have the extra army to spare. If it did, we wouldn't be discussing the Ukrainians advancing over a relatively under-defended Russian border, but the Russians advancing the other way across the relatively under-defended Ukrainian border. Unlike the Ukrainians, who built up the resources for this offensive rather than put it into the front lines, the Russians have been prioritizing beefing up the front lines over additional fronts- as seen with the recent Kharkiv offensive, which could be the analog here, but which was apparently under-resourced as a light-infantry push without significant technical/mechanized support.
Which will likely mean that Russia will need to take forces from the front lines. This likely means the reserves, not literal front line troops, but front line offensives won't be conducted with the same level if there's no reserve force to sustain the losses / exploit a success.
And in the process, those reserves are being exposed to much greater risk. This is why that HIMARs-convoy destruction is notable- the Russian maneuver warfare capability has sharply degraded over the last few years as the Russians have reverted from a post-Soviet era to a Soviet-era army, and maneuver warfare is one of the contexts where technological differentials matters more and more. The Russians are able to mitigate some of the risks of modern western capabilities when they have nested EW/AA capabilities, but when you take Russian forces out of it, you're getting back to the technology differentials of the Desert Shield era.
Which is how this serves as a strategic-level defense even if no territory or town is fought over street-by-street. Even if this offensive 'only' takes a month for the Russians to roll back to the border, that's a month of disruption to the Russian offensives elsewhere, at higher system vulnerability than in the positional defense paradigm. The Ukrainians could blunder this, of course... but even if the Russians tried to follow them right across the border, that would be a relative Ukrainian win, as there was a reason that the Russians weren't attacking that border anyway, and forces the Russians commit there aren't fueling the advances elsewhere.
And this is without the other anciliary costs and benefits. Aside from the propaganda value, including the value of Ukraine having a high-profile success near the end of the American election cycle (good news encourages continued support, when the Russian strategy has been hoping for a negative narrative to encourage American withdrawal of support), there's also the matter of western aid policy. The Ukrainians have been faced with real significant limitations on how some weapons can be used from Ukraine into Russia, such as what would allow them to go after Russian airfields. (Or- more recently- how the Kharkiv offensive was allowed to build up strength because the Ukrainians weren't allowed to fire into the clearly massing forces.) The Ukrainian offensive- in which various systems are now being used from within Russia in Russia- has had such a muted response, that this will very likely lead to relaxed restrictions in the future. If it does so, then Ukrainian gains in better utilizing western aid will further increase their overall defensive effectiveness against the Russians, and mitigate some of Russia's main enduring advantages (such as military airfields for the glide bomb campaign.)
Put all together, and I think your question of 'is this a defensible salient' is a qualified yes on an operational level (maneuver defense is a form of defense), but a much stronger yes on a campaign level (undercutting offenses in other regions by requiring commitment of Russian reserves), and especially at a strategic level (shaping western weapons restriction policy, information/vibes impact of the US election season).
But it's not necessarily the right question. It's not whether any square kilometer of the salient will be held- it's that by putting the Russians in the position of having to take it back in the first place, multiple defensive interests have likely been advanced.
Hope that helps.
/
Returning back to your specific questions-
No.
In military terms, a feint is a diversionary attack to draw enemy attention away from the decisive operation. There has to be an intended 'real effort' the feint is supposed to enable via the distraction. A feint with unexpected can translate into a genuine attack, and a feint needs enough support behind it to be credible to work as a diversion in the first place, but a feint is always in support of some other primary operation.
Instead, the primary purpose of this attack is almost certainly not to draw Russian troops away from defending conquered Ukrainian territory, but to draw Russian troops away from attacking not-conquered Ukrainian territory.
The nature of the positional struggle further south is that the Russians and Ukrainians there both have significant defensive setups with overlapping systems. The same factor that has prevented Russian breakthroughs despite months of incremental advances at high attritional cost also prevents Ukrainian breakthroughs. However, even on the offensive Russia needs reserves on those fronts to sustain the advance (as if there weren't the reserves to replace attrition, the front forces wouldn't be launching the sort of attritional attacks they have), and were Ukraine to attack there, the Russian reserves powering the advance would also be there, in more favorable defensive systems, to counter the counter-attack.
Given that a significant part of the Russian overlapping systems are systems like electronic warfare equipment to mitigate western-equipment advantages in things like precision targetting or drones, large artillery formations, and other defenses, the same X Ukrainian forces committed to the Kursk attack would almost certainly not have had the impact were they committed further south.
What the Ukrainian offensive has done is force the Russians into a very awkward position of taking forces that would otherwise be supporting the attacks further south, and bringing them around to Kursk. The Russians could conceivably try to rely on the normal conscript cycle manpower for this- except the political costs to Putin of such is why the Russians switch from the first mobilization conscription wave to the current volunteer model- and taking the forces from eastern Ukraine, reduces the ability to advance in Eastern Ukraine.
No.
In terms of 'claim,' the Ukrainians aren't making the claims the land is theirs. That doesn't mean return wouldn't be a part of negotiations, or relevant, but this isn't a 'you claimed our province so we'll claim yours.' (Probably not what you meant precisely, but it's important to be clear.)
Also no, in that the land doesn't need to be held until the point of peace talks to serve the purpose of taking it.
Per the points above about the different types of defense and the difficulties of a counter-attack on different parts of the border, the land itself is not the point. The land is a context, a battlespace with different advantages/disadvantages, but more importantly one with implications for Russian force allocation and utilization further south. Even if Russia takes back all of the Kursk salient next week, that's a week that those Russian forces aren't spending contributing to attacks further south.
Several ways, though that's not to say any one of these is 'the plan' or the decisive reason the Ukrainians did it.
Among other things, the offensive has or will likely-
-Be a more efficient attritional tradeoff of Ukrainian forces versus Russians than would be used further south, at a relatively low risk
The current Kursk attack is really not that big of a force danger to the Ukrainian forces involved, because the primary tool Russia relies on to drive up the casualties- artillery- isn't present, and many of the compounding factors- prepared defenses, covered minefields, EW to mitigate drones, etc.,- also are largely absent. Without a significant maneuver capability to isolate and cut off the Ukrainian forces, and the Russian mechanized forces are both committed to the front and have downgraded over the years to reduce that- the risk to the thousands of Ukrainians involved in this is... relatively low. Even if/when the Russians bring the forces to bear to push them out, it will generally be within the Urkainian ability to do a fighting withdrawal, picking when and where to fight until they go back behind the border (at which point if the Russians were going to invade that way, they would have before this).
Instead, the Urkainians have a significant opportunity for more selective engagements in more favorable conditions due to the Russian requirements to move forces quicker, and thus without the sort of defenses that exist on the static front. We've seen this with ambushes, the flanking / surrounding / surrender issues, the columns attacked by US precision weapons, and so on. Russia's mechanized capabilities are already heavily degraded, and their motorized forces are very vulnerable in transit when the western missiles / drones aren't being as countered by EW / drones, and the Russians are having to make that transit.
Even outside of the 'does it relieve pressure further south' dynamic, this is likely to be a more favorable attrition opportunity, and the long-term Ukrainian strategy continues to be a fundamentally attrition-based strategy in which Ukraine attrits Russian offensive capabilities (such as the forces that will be moved to conduct the counter-attack) while Western production (and thus potential aid) spools up. (It feels trite to still be saying this, but 2024 is / has been since last year expected to be the year of maximum relative Russian advantage vis-a-vis Ukraine+ backers on a production footing, as the Western investments in increasing artillery production and such are expected to start resulting in expanded production next year and grow at faster rates than Russia. Hence why Russia's strategy this year was higher manpower attrition rates than in 2023, as this year is the one with which they wanted to set conditions for potential talks with a potential new US administration / after the European elections of 24).
-Force Putin into politically difficult positions that reveal the limits of his manpower strategy to win the war by volunteer-attrition
The Ukrainian offensive was only possible because Russia has functionally bled every other front and posting in Russia white to the degree that it thinks it can get away with. While Russia has demonstrated it's willingness to keep burning through it's manpower in high-attrition rates- and we've seen the increase in recruitment offers as a monetary example of the escalating costs in both casualty and monetary terms- as long as the conflict was constrained to the established front in, say, Donetsk it was a suitable enough solution. What the Kursk incursion has demonstrated is the limits of this manpower sourcing, as the ability to fill the Russian manpower needs on a relatively narrow front doesn't mean that the only manpower Russia needs is on that narrow front. If Putin needs to garrison the frontier, he's going to need considerably more manpower- and probably the use of the conscription cycles.
This matters, because Russia lost approximately 800,000 people in 2022 not from combat, but as mass emmigration events after starting the war and the mobilization. Putin has very repeatedly not repeated the experience, but transitioned to a money-for-recruitment model after the prison-pipeline largely died out. Putin is very sensitive to the Russian public being directly involved in the war, which is what the use of Conscripts also entails, and has repeatedly demonstrated a preference to decrease military effectiveness over compelling that sort of service. Forcing Putin into that position has multiple benefits, especially since the Russian limiting factor is now the reactivation of equipment, not personnel, so even a mobilization wave wouldn't produce a practically equipped army for anything but high-political-cost garrison duty.
-Undercut Russia's information strategy of the year of presenting the entire year of one of one-sided Russian advances
Russian force utilization over the last year has been focused far more on consistency of marginal gains over military efficacy over a multi-year campaign, with an expenditure rate that almost certainly couldn't be repeated next year bar significantly more inflows from outside parties at considerable cost. The most likely (competent) reason for this is trying to frame the information environment for potential talks next year in the framework of 'Ukraine should make all the concessions, as we made all the advances last year and they were unable to do anything.'
Instead, the counter-attack (this late in the year even) illustrated Russia's continued weaknesses, demonstrated that Ukraine still had the political and material ability to launch meaningful attacks, and that Russia's position of strength in one front isn't a position to be conflated everywhere/elsewhere. That matters not only in terms of negotiations, including resisting diplomatic pressure form those who want the Ukrainians to make further territorial concessions in the name of peace, which is the Russian theory of victory on how to compel Ukraine to capitulate when the Russian military has demonstrated it really can't do so miltiarily.
Note that this also undercuts some of the anti-Ukrainian narratives in the global information environment. One of the common narratives since the start of the war has been that Ukraine is on the cusp of a failure cascade for lack of forces / equipment to resist, and that every operation is throwing what they have away and etc. etc. etc. Successful counter-offensives, even 'small' ones, counter this by demonstrating that the force generation surpluses needed to take to the offense and not just defend still exists. This will likely be more relevant in the future when rebutting criticisms of the 2023 counter-offensive as inherently doomed to fail, as the current Kursk offensive is demonstrating that offensives are potentially successful, and that the factors that determined whether Ukraine can succeed are factors that can be accounted for (say- having the right aid policies to counter russian capabilities), rather than being beyond control or recreation (dismissing the 2022 offensives as flukes).
-Bolster western supporters by generating a high-publicity win
This goes into aid politics. Just as the Russian propaganda incentive has been to present the conflict as a futile struggle with an inevitable conclusion that Western countries shouldn't bother sending Ukraine aid for because of the futility, Ukraine has an incentive to show partners that it's weapons enable good results. People like backing underdogs, but also winners, and especially underdogs that can produce wins, which improves the (foreign donor) political support for continuing to donate aid. Sometimes launching offenses isn't even a 'we do it for the fans' priority, but 'the patreons demand it of us' dynamic, which was seen in 2023 when the Ukrainian offensive that year had a degree of western pressure to conduct to justify the sizable aid buildup.
Even though the Ukrainian offensive is not presenting itself as relying on western kit (to avoid donor fears of escalation), it is being enabled by western kit elsewhere, and in turn facilitating future aid delivery in a way that committing the forces further south wouldn't.
(If you really wanted to expand this argument, you could claim that generating a win is intended to help the Democrats in the US election, as the Ukraine support is a broadly more-popular-than-not thing for the Democratic coalition, and that a high profile success may indirectly boost the Democrat's prospects. However, there's no particular reason to believe this was the motive, as opposed to a welcome anciliary benefit, as the motives for the Ukrainians to act remain.)
-Improve western weapon efficiency by breaking down sensitivity restrictions by demonstration
One of the dynamics of the western aid to Ukraine has been the amount of usage-restrictions imposed in the name of avoiding 'escalation' with Russia. I use the term in quotations because there is now a multi-year pattern as Russian explicit/implicit threats if a category of aid were to reach Ukraine, the aid reaching Ukraine, and the threats not materializing- rather the threats served primarily to delay the arrival and limit the utility of capabilities provided. This has had multiple operational impacts, ranging from undercutting the 2023 counteroffensive (Russians were able to use helicopter aviation much more aggressively against the forces trying to breach minefields because ATACMs and similar missiles that could disrupt airfields were being witheld because they could range into Russia; the ATACMs were unlocked later in the offensive), or even this year's 2024 Russian Kharkiv offensive, in which Russian buildup was observed and well within potential fire range, but western aid restrictions prohibited attacks onto Russian territory where the buildup was occuring (the restriction was relaxed for the adjacent areas).
What the current offensive is doing is further breaking down the Western weapon usage taboos by demonstrating that the sky doesn't fall if you attack into Russia. It's notable that the Ukrainians are mostly doing this with Soviet-era kit for this reason, as it limits the political perception risk, but likewise the Russian response is, well, something the Ukrainians can plausibly point to to justify being able to strike military targets in Russia.
This matters because the current restriction that would mean quite a bit is the ability to more aggressively target Russian airfields not just in Crimea, but Russia proper, where the Russians have been launching the glide-bomb campaign. The Russian glide bombs are one of the main Russian advantage points in the current context, arguably more so than artillery due to the heavy glide bombs ability to destroy fortifications, and being able to use western weapons against such airfields would matter.
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