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1 September 2024

Building on Kursk

Lawrence Freedman

In my previous post I described the Ukrainian move into Kursk as intended to shift the narrative around the war. Prior to the invasion the view was that Ukraine was on the defensive, making Russian advances as painful as possible without actually stopping them, and so looking for other ways to hurt Russia. The core strategy was to hang on until Russia’s losses reached the point where its offensives petered out and its leadership started to look for a way out. The advantage of the Kursk operation was that it showed that Ukraine could take military initiative and as a result make serious gains while catching Moscow by surprise.

On 27 August, three weeks after the start of the incursion, President Zelensky and his Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi provided an update on its progress and what they hope to achieve. According to Syrskyi, Ukraine now controls 1,294 square kilometers and 100 settlements. He reported that 594 Russian soldiers have been captured. More importantly, in terms of the desire to encourage Russia to move troops out of Ukraine to deal with the Kursk situation, he spoke of the redirection of about 30,000 troops from other sectors to Kursk, adding that ‘this number is growing.’ The number required for a Russian counter-offensive in Kursk is assessed to be around 50,000. Yet, as was anticipated, Russia still persists with its dogged advance in the Pokrovsk sector. This is its top priority, to which it has assigned its most combat-ready units.

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