Ukraine in Kursk: quick assessment

The 2025 Predictions compo was coming along – but has to wait!  Because …

A short while ago we suggested here that Putin was prone to forgetting that the enemy gets a vote; and that Ukraine, already shown to be adept at springing surprises, was likely to have a couple more up its sleeve before Trump convenes any kind of sit-down around a table somewhere.  Yesterday saw the start of one such: a significantly renewed Ukrainian effort on Russian soil in the form of several attacks from their Kursk salient and elsewhere in that vicinity.

The Russian milbloggosphere is in characteristic turmoil over this, and with a new twist.  Previous big surprises – the Wagner ‘mutiny’ of last year and the Kursk incursion in August – caught them with very little information to go on, and they floundered.  This time, because the Kursk salient was already an area of active operations and an issue that exercised patriotic milbloggers greatly, they have a lot of contacts on the ground feeding them detailed, if extremely patchy and chaotic information.  They also have the usual kneejerk drivel from the Russian MoD, but they know that’s always going to be mendacious and wildly complacent.  All in all, they haven’t known what to make of it all, and initially resorted to parroting the official “all tidied up, nothing to see here, move along” stuff.  But they knew that wasn’t right.

As of this morning, they’ve settled for a handful of agreed conclusions:  

• what’s been seen so far isn’t the main Ukrainian thrust, which is yet to come;
• even this “diversionary” activity has met with some success;
• Ukraine is deploying electronic warfare measures that are neutering Russian drones, along with some seemingly effective all-arms coordination in depth.

None that I’ve seen have made the obvious comment, which would be to liken this winter push to the Battle of the Bulge:  though one has suggested it is a “blow of last hope”, which maybe amounts to the same thing.

Finally, the most knowledgeable blog-writers have held back from drawing preliminary conclusions altogether (and of course Putin, as ever in such circumstances, remains entirely silent and missing from the public sphere), which is wise because the Ukrainians are just as good at chess as the Russians and have had many months to plan this move.  The date of Trump’s inauguration has, after all, been known for quite a while.

Am I going to fall into the first-draft-of-history-trap here?  No: just a handful of points.

• this “blow of last hope” should have been blatantly obvious to Putin et al, both in general and in detail: yet again, his ability to be thrown by tactical events seemingly knows no limits: we can adduce half a dozen such unforced errors around his sphere of (notional) influence since the Syrian debacle alone.  He may have a brutal ‘theory of (long-run) victory’, but if he trips up and falls flat on his face in the meantime, it might still not work out.
• plenty of time between now and Jan 20 for more …
• this year has seen some deeply impressive mil-tech advances from Ukraine’s still highly capable defence-industrial base.  I’ve been expecting the electronic warfare anti-drone breakthrough for 18 months – they really needed it for their 2023 summer offensive, but better late than never.  There may be more to come on this front, too: and while tech advances tend to be countered by the other side after a while, the issue right now is the next couple of months. 

On paper, Putin shouldn’t even be worrying about Kursk – he’ll get it back for sure in due course, one way or the other – but I’ll bet he is.

ND