A surprise incursion by Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk Oblast entered its third day on 8 August 2024, with Russian local authorities declaring a state of emergency in the region.
Since the incursion began a number of Russian villages have been occupied, as well as the town of Sudzha, where Ukrainian troops reportedly established control over a major gas facility used in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine.
While Russian reports had previously claimed that the Ukrainian incursion had been repelled, on 8 August a statement posted on the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) website only said that “the operation to neutralise the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] units is in progress”.
“Units of the Sever Group of Forces along with units of the Russian Federal Security Service continue to eliminate armed AFU formations in Sudzha and Korenevo districts of Kursk region immediately adjacent to the border between Russia and Ukraine,” the Russian MoD claimed. “Over the [last] 24 hours, active actions of the State Border Covering Force along with border units, reinforcement units and arrived reserves, air and missile strikes, and artillery fire prevented the enemy from advancing. Fire damage is inflicted on the located AFU manpower and hardware clusters. Attempts of separate units to get to the depth of territories in Kursk direction were foiled.”
The Russian MoD further claimed that, since the Kursk incursion began, “the AFU losses have amounted to up to 660 Ukrainian troops, 82 units of armoured hardware, including eight tanks, 12 armoured personnel carriers, six infantry fighting vehicles, 55 armoured fighting vehicles, and one counter obstacle vehicle”.
The Ukrainian MoD and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the other hand, have made no comment on the operation, although some Ukrainian politicians have acknowledged it and post on social media have shown Russian border guards surrendering and Russian tanks destroyed on their transporters.
The big question, however, is what is the operation trying to achieve? Up until now there have been very few incursions into Russian territory during the Ukraine War, but those that have taken place have been conducted by pro-Ukrainian Russian forces, while it appears that the latest operation involves regular Ukrainian forces, with the Russian MoD mentioning in particular Ukraine’s 22nd Mechanised Brigade.
The Ukrainian military certainly cannot afford to lose manpower and materiel in a limited offensive that will ultimately be blunted and Kyiv does not have the air superiority that would allow such an operation to prevail. Nevertheless, if the plan was, for whatever reason, to draw Russian forces out of position to stem the Ukrainian assault, then, judging by the statements from the Russian MoD, the operation has at least succeeded in doing that.
Another factor might be Ukraine wishing to demonstrate that, moving forward, the war will not only be conducted exclusively on Ukrainian territory. Combined with previous occasions where Ukraine has used stand-off missiles and bomb-laden unmanned aerial vehicles to strike targets deep inside Russian territory, a ground assault on Russian soil especially exposes the lie of Russian President Vladimir Putin that the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine is going as planned.
