(CNN) – A Russian counteroffensive is underway to recapture parts of Kursk lost to Ukrainian forces following a surprise cross-border attack, but it has yet to gain momentum.
Ukraine launched its assault last month, capturing dozens of settlements, a move that surprised even Kyiv’s allies. But from the beginning, observers said it was unlikely he would be able to maintain his gains.
Geolocated videos show that Russian units have retaken a couple of villages, but the situation remains fluid. Both the quality and number of Russian troops committed to the region are uncertain, and reliable accounts from the front are scarce.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged the start of the Russian counteroffensive and says he intends to deploy between 60,000 and 70,000 troops in the Kursk region. But he said Friday that the Russians “haven’t had any serious success yet.” And he added: “Our heroic soldiers are resisting.”
The United States has assessed that Russia would need up to 20 brigades, about 50,000 men, to expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk, but Defense Department spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday that Russian actions so far were “marginal” and analysts have not seen the kind of mass or quality that would quickly drive out the much smaller Ukrainian force.
Some high-caliber units appear to be involved in the Russian counteroffensive; Geolocated videos showed elements of the elite 51st Parachute Regiment involved in an assault on Thursday. But the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that little of the Russian group in Kursk “is composed of units with combat experience.”
Initial indications are that Russian forces may attempt to cut off Ukrainian troops near the city of Korenevo before beginning a larger-scale counteroffensive operation.
A Ukrainian officer involved in the Kursk operation told CNN on Friday that the Russians had taken about two kilometers (an assessment shared by Russian military bloggers) on the western edge of the area captured by the Ukrainians last month. The officer said poor communications were hampering their operations.
A video circulated of the Russian flag (and the flag of the private military company Wagner) being raised in the village of Snahost. But the officer said the situation had stabilized and there was heavy fighting in another nearby village.
There are also signs that Ukrainian units may be developing a new assault route towards a different part of Kursk, near the town of Veseloe. This could be intended to distract Russian forces.
“By launching surprise offensives across the poorly defended border, Ukraine can conduct guerrilla warfare at the operational level to support an overall strategy of depletion,” says Robert Rosefrom the Institute of Modern Warfare at West Point.
Despite the Russian counterattack on Kursk and mounting Ukrainian losses, Zelensky insists that the Kursk raid is necessary and valuable, and has slowed Russian advances in eastern Donetsk, where the city of Pokrovsk is under immediate threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to fully capture four regions of eastern Ukraine that he already partially controls, and most of the fighting in the war has focused on this area.
Zelensky told a panel in Kyiv on Friday moderated by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that Russia’s lead in artillery munitions in the Pokrovsk area had narrowed from 12 to 1 to 2.5 to 1, which he attributed to the success of the Kursk.
“The speed (of the Russian advance) in the Donetsk sector was even faster before the Kursk operation. And not only in the Donetsk sector, but throughout the east,” Zelensky said.
Although the Russian push slowed in the first week of September, no significant units were withdrawn to fight at Kursk, although some were redeployed from less contested areas along the 1,000 kilometer front line. The Kremlin appears to prioritize the goal of progress in Donetsk over recovering lost Russian territory, for now.
The Ukrainians have offered several reasons for the Kursk operation: that it would force Russia to redeploy troops currently committed to the front lines in Ukraine; that it would provide Ukraine with land to negotiate in any negotiations; that he would ridicule Putin’s ‘red lines’; and that he would provide a group of prisoners of war to exchange (which he already achieved).
Zelensky has now added another justification for the Kursk offensive: that it prevented a Russian plan to take a large swath of northern Ukraine as a buffer zone, a plan that would have absorbed “regional centers.”
He told the Kyiv panel that “information from our partners” indicated that the Russians intended to create “safety zones” inside Ukraine.
The ISW, a think tank in Washington, said Friday that the Russian military command may have planned “additional offensive operations along a broader, continuous front in northeastern Ukraine to significantly stretch Ukrainian forces.”
For now, such Russian ambitions are on hold. They still have the advantage in firepower and men along most of the existing front lines and will continue to use the tactic of intense bombing, followed by infantry advances through the ruins of what has been destroyed, as a way to wear down the enemy.
The Ukrainians have several immediate priorities: creating and strengthening defensive lines in the east and accelerating the formation of new units. They are developing longer-range strike capabilities to degrade Russian infrastructure, such as airfields and fuel depots. And they are demanding greater freedom to use Western precision missiles in strikes deeper inside Russian territory.
Zelensky told Fareed Zakaria on Friday that the guided aerial bombs of Russia, known as FABs, were responsible for 80% of the destroyed infrastructure, and that Ukraine urgently needed to attack the airfields from which they are launched.
This call appears to be gaining traction. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in his Friday meeting with US President Joe Biden that “the coming weeks and months could be crucial, very, very important that we support Ukraine in this vital war for freedom.”
But the Biden administration is cautious about the consequences of what the Kremlin sees as an escalation that would lead NATO directly into conflict.
The Kursk raid may encourage Ukraine to develop another tool that “could fundamentally change Ukraine’s approach to fighting,” according to the Modern Warfare Institute’s Rose.
“Ukraine cannot use maneuvers to achieve a decisive victory over Russia. What it can do is use maneuvers to exploit vulnerabilities, force Russia to overextend, create chaos, encircle Russian forces and capture Russian equipment.”
The crux of the issue, according to Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven, is how Ukraine changes Putin’s decision-making, whether on Kursk or through much deeper strikes inside Russia, or both.
“Does he negotiate? Does it make you go back or pause in Donetsk?”
The Kursk offensive may have been successful in persuading Biden and other Western allies to approve deeper strikes, Schmidt says, and “if follow-up strikes can sustain the war inside Russia, in a way that affects the Russians and then affect the Kremlin’s decision-making.”
That would define it as a success. But we need to ask the bigger question, as the US eventually did in Iraq, Schmidt says. “How does this end?”
