Mick Ryan
When observing the events, big and small, in contemporary wars, I find myself drawn back to the theory of war to provide the intellectual foundations to understand what is happening and why. Not everything can be explained by satellite images, newspaper articles or the online OSINT community (as good as it is). Military theory often provides context to better explain what we are seeing in the war in Ukraine. As Clausewitz’s quote above notes, the major campaigns of this war are always grounded in politics, not just the search for military advantage.
The big development in the war in Ukraine in the past two weeks has been Ukraine’s Kursk offensive and the seizing of over 1100 square kilometres of Russian territory. This has been an impressively planned and executed Ukrainian ground operation. It has demonstrated Ukrainian learning and adaptation after the failure of its 2023 counteroffensive, which will be the topic of a future article here. The Kursk operation may also change the direction of the war.
Ukrainian objectives for the Kursk operation have gained some recent clarity with statements by the Ukrainian President, as well as other Ukrainian officials. In the past 24 hours, President Zelenskyy has spoken of how the Kursk operation seeks to achieve several objectives.
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