Ukraine’s Kursk offensive marks Putin’s third major humiliation of the war

Brian Whitmore

Source Link

We now live in a world in which Ukraine has invaded Russia. And we now live in a world in which Ukraine, as of the time of this writing, is occupying a slice of Russian territory roughly the size of New York City.

We still don’t know the military significance of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Oblast, which marks the first time that foreign troops have occupied Russian territory since World War II. But judging from the Kremlin’s whiny initial response—in which Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top officials decried and downplayed the offensive as a “terrorist attack” and an “armed provocation”—the political fallout promises to be enormous.

This is because the invasion and occupation of parts of Kursk Oblast marks the third major military humiliation the Kremlin leader has suffered since launching his full-scale assault on Ukraine in February 2022.

The first humiliation: February-September 2022

First, of course, there was the routing of Russian forces in the battle of Kyiv in the early phase of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The embarrassing withdrawal of Russian forces from near the Ukrainian capital in March 2022 was quickly followed by more military humiliations for the Kremlin, including Ukraine’s April 2022 sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.