Ukraine: Kursk on the line

By Richard North - September 12, 2024

For the coming weeks, said John Healey on 10 September in a statement to the Commons, two things are clear: “[the] Ukrainians need to strengthen their frontline in the east and they will look to hold the territory in Kursk”.

The defence secretary then went on to say, “The longer they hold Kursk, the weaker Putin becomes. The longer they hold Kursk, the better defended Ukraine will be”.

In response, the shadow secretary, in the much-depleted Conservative ranks, declared that the “surprise incursion” into Kursk “has thrown Putin’s regime into confusion”. But, he warned, “Russia remains a formidable foe and nothing at all can be taken for granted”.

These were the only two speakers specifically to mention the Kursk incursion but, further into the hour-long debate, attended by eighty or so MPs, Tory MP Mark Francoise spoke of allowing the Ukrainians “full freedom of action to retaliate, not just as a military necessity, but to maintain their own morale”.

In response, Healey referred to the “900 sq km of the Kursk region that is now in Ukrainian hands”, stating that the “moral”, or morale, impact on Ukrainian troops and Ukrainian citizens has been huge”. So, he added, “just as it is putting pressure on Putin, it is also lifting the spirits of Ukraine after nearly 1,000 days of a bloody battle against Putin’s invasion”.

No-one in the House that day, however, can have been aware that – even as the MPs spoke – Mr Putin was addressing that “moral”, or morale impact of the Kursk incursion with an intervention of his own – what appears to be a major counter-offensive in the salient, about which Reuters retails some of the Russian claims.

The news agency quotes Maj-Gen. Apti Alaudinov, who commands Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces fighting in Kursk, who had said, via TASS that Russian forces had taken back control over about 10 settlements in Kursk, confirming that Russian forces had gone on the offensive.

This had followed a brief statement from the Kremlin on 6 August, when the Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov had been asked about “crushing Ukrainian troops” out of the Kursk region. “Naturally, the military has all necessary plans”, he said, adding: “But I don’t think [they] can be discussed publicly”.

With the cat out of the bag, so to speak – with not a Haitian in sight – the media and just about everybody else seems to have been caught out by this development, with the Telegraph not running a report until mid-evening yesterday.

The Times, on the other hand, does not seem to have filed any report on the counter-offensive. Apart from a puff about Ukraine’s “navy seals”, it is seemingly content to recycle news about Britain and the US being on the verge of allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets in Russia, following accusations that Putin was “escalating” the conflict by accepting ballistic missiles from Iran.

In fact – despite the attacks being acknowledged in the Kyiv Post, under the heading: “Russia Claims Early Success as Major Counteroffensive in Kursk Region Begins” – reportage in the British national media seems remarkably thin.

Even the Guardian, which keeps a running log of “war briefings” is offering only limited detail, running to a mere two paragraphs (at the time of writing).

The BBC, on the other hand, is still locked into the escalation narrative, reporting on the comments of foreign secretary David Lammy who, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was in Kiev for talks with Zelensky.

According to this source, Lammy has said that the delivery of Iranian missiles to Russia has changed the debate about Ukraine using Western-provided long-range missiles against targets inside Russia, apparently oblivious to the situation on the ground, where a successful Russian counter-offensive could end up being a game-changer.

With that, details of the Russian action are hard to come by, and even (or especially) the Telegraph relies for much of its report on social media, as indeed do most media sources which have bothered to retail actual news.

Thus, The Moscow Times relies on the “pro-war” Telegram channel Rybar, which is said to have close ties to the military. It claims that Russian forces have recaptured the border towns of Gordeevka and Vnezapnoye as part of a “local counter offensive” in the Korenevsky district.

Dva Mayora, another Telegram channel, noted for providing running coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine, named four additional nearby towns where the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade had “successfully advanced.”

Exercising caution over unsubstantiated reports, The Moscow Times – like Reuters – tells us it “could not immediately verify” the claims, but it does note that the Ukrainian open-source intelligence website Deep State has acknowledged the Russians offensive.

It says that “the situation on the left flank of our grouping in the Kursk region has deteriorated”, adding that Ukrainian forces have recently lost control over the town of Korenevo and that the two warring sides had clashed in the nearby village of Snagost.

Predictably, the Ukrainians are making light of the venture. The agency Ukrinform in the absence of any official comment, is relying on the head of the Centre for Military and Legal Research, Oleksandr Musienko.

He says that the Ukrainian armed forces “are shifting from exclusively offensive operations in Kursk region” to an effort to restrain Russian troops, whom they succeeded in pulling from the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove axes in eastern Ukraine.

“The situation in Kursk region”, he argues, “is completely predictable. The operation in Kursk region, from being exclusively offensive on the part of the Ukrainian troops, turns into an operation to restrain Russian troops”.

Currently, they (Russians – ed.) have amassed about 35,000 manpower in the area from where Russia is trying to counterattack. And it must be understood that these 35,000 are now not in the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove axes but still in Kursk region.

“Therefore, the idea of the Ukrainian command that Russia will eventually pull some troops and that we will them restrain them is working”, Musienko said, effectively repeating the Syrskyi propaganda line, without adding much detail to the discourse.

Inevitably, in a fast-moving, dynamic situation, it will take some time for reliable details to emerge, and in the interim, there will be claims and counter-claims as the rival forces fight it out.

Naturally, each side will achieve local tactical successes. The social media is cluttered with videos of individual engagements showing these, but they are meaningless without the broader operational context. As the battle ebbs and flows around Snagost, the elapse of a further 24 hours may have things looking very different.

What is indisputable, though, is that militarily Ukraine is under heavy pressure and the war is not going well for its armed forces. This much is rehearsed in a recent article in the Economist, days before the Kursk counter-offensive broke cover.

And if the situation was bad then, under current circumstances, it can only be worse. Ironically, two days ago, the Independent was headlining an analytical piece by Mark Galeotti: “Ukraine’s attack on Russia started as a triumph – but could turn into a catastrophic strategic mistake”.

Galeotti argues that there’s a huge difference between besting poorly trained forces and being able to keep a firm grip on occupied land, but it is too early to say whether this is a material issue. The only certainty is that the diminishing band who rely on the legacy media for their news will be the last to know what is happening.