Eugene Rumer
Emissary harnesses Carnegie’s global scholars to deliver incisive, nuanced analysis on the most pressing international affairs challenges.Learn More
“Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in,” President Vladimir Putin, echoing Michael Corleone’s famous line from The Godfather Part III, probably thought in recent days. Until a week ago, the war in Ukraine was going well for the Russian leader: his troops were making small but steady territorial gains, the West was growing tired of the war, and Kyiv’s uncompromising refusal to negotiate an end to the conflict was softening. And then, on August 6, the Ukrainian army launched its offensive into the Kursk region of Russia.
It is hard to imagine a more humiliating setback for Putin and his generals than the Ukrainian army seizing some 800 square kilometers of Russian territory in that particular region. To most Russians, the very mention of Kursk invokes the memory of the battle of July–August of 1943. In Soviet and Russian historiography, the Soviet army’s victory in that epic clash paved the way for, in Putin’s own words, “the imminent and inevitable collapse” of Nazi Germany. With countless articles devoted to it in Russian military publications and generations of Soviet and Russian military officers schooled in its lessons, the Battle of Kursk has long been held up by Soviet and Russian military science as the pinnacle of the art of war. On August 23, 2023, Putin personally traveled to the old battlefield to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of that victory, to unveil the Battle of Kursk memorial, and to present awards to soldiers who distinguished themselves in the “special military operation” against Ukraine.
What a difference a year makes! Photographs released by the Kremlin from Putin’s August 12 meeting with his security chiefs to discuss the Ukrainian offensive show little jubilation on their part. The Second Battle of Kursk—if that is what the Ukrainian offensive into Russia will be called—is testimony to both Ukrainian bravery, daring, and resolve and the historic blunder Putin committed by launching a full-scale assault on Ukraine two and a half years ago.
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