Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
- 6
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So it seems that Kursk offensive is not going well for Ukraine
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/09/europe/russia-advances-kursk-ukraine-intl/index.html
Also it seems that the Russians are taking their time and try to put Zelensky in a bad situation. They seems to want to keep the Ukrainians inside the cauldron with theoretical possibility to be saved and re-supplied as not to surrender, but to kill them off slowly to maximize demoralization in the other parts of Ukraine army. They prefer it as a bleeding wound for Ukraine. I don't think that they will be allowed to retreat. All in all it was not a smart move to begin with.
If you forget to factor in the last six months, I suppose.
The fact that you are talking about troubles in a pocket on the Kursk front more than half a year after the initial offensive, and not some pocket on the Donetsk front like where the supposedly imminent fall of the strategic town of Pokrovsk at the time of the launch of the Kursk offensive was supposed to throw the Donetsk defensive line into shambles, is rather simple counter-point of why it was a good idea. The Russians are continuing to spend a considerable amount of their offensive capabilities trying to dig Ukraine out of Russia, which was not expected to be kept by the Ukrainians regardless, rather than out of Ukraine, where the Russians have very clearly demonstrated an intent use the front lines as teh boundary of control. Front lines where they could have been making greater advances with greater forces under the umbrella of the greater buildup of defenses on their side of the line, had strategic priorities not shifted more to the Kursk pocket.
Your article raises this point-
-and, low and behold, six months later resources are still being diverted from the front lines in the east, and Pokrovsk still hasn't fallen, despite its imminent fall being a reoccurring topic of discussion since late last summer.
Even if you want to present an argument that once the Ukrainians in Kursk are defeated the Russians will return and finish the job there (or elsewhere) and collapse the front immediately because the Ukrainians all died or lost the will to fight over Kursk, the fact of a six-month delay in not-taking a city on the 'cusp' of falling is a fact that there have been six months of additional time for fortification work along that front, and six more months of higher attrition against that entire front from the front not-collapsing while the Russians kept pushing (in part because they used continuing pushes there to drive propaganda that the Kursk front wasn't diverting any resources).
The value of diverting resources isn't lost even if another line of benefit (trading away Russian territory for Ukrainian territory at the negotiating table) is lost because the Russians prioritize taking back Russian territory over taking more Ukrainian territory. That is, in fact, the same effect- it's the same principle, regardless of whether that trade is at the negotiating table or the battlefield table.
At which point, whether it was a smart move to begin with is going to be a claim that has to compare with the alternative- and the alternative at the start of the Kursk Offensive about six months ago was a steady Russian grind under the cover of substantial advantages in airpower and artillery superiority due to its own pocket-effect that was, reportedly, about to throw the entire front into chaos.
Put another way- would you have expected fewer potential Ukrainian encirclements by this point had the Donetsk line destabilized further?
That seems like another instance of the "Western media proclaims that Russia has some internal milestone, then opines that it's a sign of weakness that the milestone was not met", which has been a recurrent strategy since the start - analogous to if the Russians said that the F-16s were supposed to stop Russian deep strikes, and the circumstance that the interception rate is lower than ever proves that F-16s are trash.
None of the Russian sources I follow seemed to be of the opinion that a fall of Pokrovsk is imminent, or even a high operational priority. Also, manifestly, the Kursk incursion did coincide with an increase of Russian advances, however small - we obviously can't access the counterfactual, but it's quite conceivable that without the Kursk incursion Ukraine could have by now conducted some successful larger-scale counteroffensives elsewhere.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link