In Dire Straits
The Invasion of Kursk versus the Prospects for Peace
If, as seems possible, the principal Ukraining objective for its Kursk invasion is to head for and take control over the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), this has not, so far been achieved, and as of my time of writing in the late afternoon (California time) of August 9th, Ukraine’s advances in that direction have been effectively buffered by Russia.
If, as I say, the KNPP is indeed the principal objective, then that would certainly bolster the view of those who believe that securing KNPP is seen by Ukraine as a prelude to using it as a negotiating counter either in the context of talks with Russia to end the war, or in a more limited measure to effect an exchange of KNPP for the Russian-held Zapporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
If this is the game-plan it does not seem a hugely convincing project.
First of all, Ukraine should be able to work out that regardless of how ineffective Russia has proven over its border security in Kursk, it would take the protection of the KNPP very seriously and, furthermore, would clearly have time to send in significant reinforcements to whatever security forces already exist there before Ukraine was able to advance far enough.
That Russia has indeed been ineffective in border security is not in doubt, given that: (1) the invasion occurred; (2) that Russian Chief of Staff, Valery Gerasimov, is said to have received warnings of a build-up of Ukrainian troops as much as two weeks ago; and (3) the invasion has not only secured a great deal of Sudzha and its surrounding area but that this is automatically a threat to the security of Kursk city, population 470,000, which lies 85 kilometers from Sudzhe or one and a half hours by car.
The KNPP lies near the town of Kurchatov which is about forty kilometers from Sudzhe. The KNPP is one of the three biggest nuclear power plants in Russia and one of the four biggest electricity producers in Russia. A second plant is being built to replace it under the construction of Rosenergostam, a subsidiary of Rosatom.
A secondary Ukrainian objective, therefore, may have been less to do with acquiring a bargaining chip, but with somehow knocking out or reducing the availability of power in the region presumably as a prelude to some other military action, perhaps involving the F-16s that have recently arrived in Ukraine. Given that so far Ukraine has not achieved this objective, because it has not been able to penetrate into the Kurchatov area, then it may already have been pre-empted by the likelihood of what may be a further and more than usually devastating Russian missile and drone attack, as early as this evening (?), on Ukrainian energy facitilies across the nation.
That Ukraine may have hoped that acquisition of the KNPP could have been considered a negotiating counter within the context of a broader approach to peace talks bears some further thought. There have been some indications in recent weeks from Zelenskiy and his camp that Ukraine was relaxing, a little, on its otherwise cast-iron determination, in public, to push Russia back to the 1991 borders. Visits to Kiev of international leaders like Hungary’s Orban, or of Kiev leaders to their counterparts overseas (like Kuleba’s visit to Wang Yi in Guangdong) appeared to be cautious moves towards the start of peace negotiations.
But they were moves, apparently, in which Ukraine did not communicate its intention to invade Russia. In the view of some, including today’s Global Times in China, the invasion itself is proof that Ukraine is not interested in peace and wants to keep the war going. And that is likely to be Russia’s position as well so that Russia will, if anything, harden the conditions that it needs Ukraine to accept before there can be a ceasefire.
Or perhaps, Ukraine just did what it has done to see what would happen, what further opportunities it might provide. And although the US may pretend that it did not expect Ukraine’s move on Sudzhe, it is, in the opinion of former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, impossible that the CIA was not aware of it. In short, the invasion of Kursk probably has nothing to do with peace, but with continuing conflict and destabilization at least up until the November US presidential election.
The operation demonstrates an unusual canniness on the part of Ukraine. In its previous offensives, Ukraine has, to my own puzzlement, provided ample notice of its intentions to the world. Perhaps in the belief that this would improve the flow of western arms and money. This time, it has shown much better organization and planning, and an ability to keep quiet. Ukraine is even exercising pressure on its bloggers, mappers and others to focus their work only on the Kursk advance and to remain silent about other areas of the combat lines for the time being.
The purpose, presumably, is that this will magnify media coverage of what Ukraine hopes will be its victorious march into Kursk, while reducing the flow of information from other parts of the battlefield where Ukraine is not doing nearly so well. Given the overall western mainstream media dependence on Ukrainian sources as opposed to Russian, this may hide from the world the rapidity of Russian advances in such areas of Ukraine as Avdiivka, Siversk, Chasiv Yar and Toretsk - especially given that these other points of the combat line have been relatively denuded in favor of the Kursk operation.
One big question I have is whether Russia will exploit this with the speed and determination that the situation seems to call for.
This consideration links to another that is singularly important, assuming there is substance to it. It concerns the extent to which the Kursk invasion was possible for Ukraine to launch only if it was able to redeploy significant forces from other parts of the combat lines, together with the possibility that Zelenskiy has, for some time now, been starving regular combat forces of the manpower and equipment they would normally expect, so as to build up the force necessary to invade Kursk. This may not go down very well with Ukrainian forces on other parts of the combat lines, especially so if the Kursk invasion ends up as a failure and especially given their evidence frustrations to date.
The scenario suggests the possibility that the Kursk invasion is Zelenskiy’s one last, desperate throw of the dice. He is investing pretty much all his remaining valuable assets into it. If it works, then the war continues for longer, but Russia still ultimately wins because it is by far the stronger power. If it doesn’t work, the collapse of Ukraine will come sooner than expected.
One should be aware of the viewpoint of Zelenskiy’s minder, Andriy Yermak, that Russia has only a month or so’s fight left in it, a viewpoint with which I disagree because I see no evidence that Russia is lacking in men or in weaponry or in weapons production capability or strong allies.
The collective West almost unanimously supports Kiev’s invasion of Kursk and the use of Western weapons to achieve that end. One corrollary almost certainly will be to add incentive to Russia to supply high grade weaponry to the collective West’s opponents, along other points of the West’s counter-revolution against multipolarity, namely the Middle East and Taiwan. These will likely include but not be limited to the Houthis in Yemen, Iran and Syria.
What Counts as Victory for Russia?
The foregoing underlines the relevance of a recent article by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism which questions whether Russia has given sufficient thought to its end-game. Could Russia win the war and lose the peace? Russia must now impose its will on Ukraine, but cannot stop the West from ever again using Ukraine to threaten Russian security. Russia does not appear to have embraced the necessity of somehow subjugating most if not all of Western Ukraine. Yet it will have to conquer, subdue, or somehow get other countries to partition Western Ukraine. This is in part because it will need to control the Dnieper watershed.
“The imperiled and not-far-in-the-future-to-be-toast status of the Slavynsk-Kramatorsk line may seem to be yet another map-watcher obsession. In fact this will be a key inflection point whether it comes about via continued Russia force or accelerating Ukraine military collapse. This is the last major fortified line in the built-up Donbass area. Russia if it wants to, particularly given its control of the sky, would be able to move to the Dnieper in fairly short order and/or threaten Kiev if it wanted to make the point that Ukraine was now ripe for Russia’s picking.
“…The big point is that Russia is finally getting to the point where it can define the end game. Yet what does Russia want?”
Does it know what it wants? It has been forced by NATO to expand its objectives, but does not seem to have rethought its aims. Has Russia grown fuzzy about its objectives? Western over-investment in the idea of victory is making a stable resolution more difficult. Medvedev has envisioned the possibility of reducing Ukraine to Greater Kiev and letting Ukraine’s neighbors, particularly Poland, gobble up Western Ukraine. There is a remote possibility, argues Smith, that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s recent travel to Ukraine, Russia, and now China could advance this plan. John Helmer has proposed a big demilitarized zone in Western Ukraine. Russia has also said it needs to impose a big buffer zone if the West keeps helping Ukraine attack Russia. Or could Russia come up with a clever way to create a puppet state in western Ukraine? Probably not. But the point is, Russia needs a plan.
The Politics of Retaliations
The following comes from Russia Matters website:
Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:
Washington has warned Turkey that there will be “consequences” if the country does not curtail its exports to Russia of U.S. military-linked hardware that is vital to Moscow’s war machine. Turkey’s exports of high-priority military-linked goods, sent to Russia or to suspected intermediaries for Moscow such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, have boomed since the war began. It registered $85 million in the first six months of this year, well above the $27million in the same period in 2022. (FT, 08.07.24)
The U.K. accounting regulator has hit EY with a £295,000 penalty after the accounting firm breached a fee cap in relation to its client Evraz, the Russian steel company in which oligarch Roman Abramovich was at the time the largest shareholder. (FT, 08.08.24)
British Airways has become the latest European airline to scale back flights to China as demand weakens and the cost of avoiding Russian airspace reduces the appeal of the route for carriers. (FT, 08.08.24)
Estonia's government said on Aug. 8 that full customs controls have been introduced at the Baltic country's border with Russia, replacing random border checks. (RFE/RL, 08.08.24)
A Russian government commission led by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov blocked the sale of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV’s stake in a Russian joint venture to its Turkish partner Anadolu Efes AS, according to a newspaper report. (Bloomberg, 08.06.24)
Hugo Boss has completed the sale of its Russian business, the German luxury fashion brand has announced, the latest Western company to exit Russia over its unprovoked war in Ukraine. The buyer is wholesale company Stockmann, which acquired Boss's Russian operation for an undisclosed amount. (RFE/RL, 08.06.24)
The Battlefields
The situation with respect to Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk as of midday (California time) on Friday, August 9th is that significant Russian reinforcements have arrived into Kursk, in the direction of Sudzha. However, the invading forces called upon the local civilian population to evacuate, with the probable intention of inciting a panicked exit on local roads of poor quality. The advance of arriving Russian reinforcements was consequently impeded by traffic blockages from Rylsk in the west to Ryshkovo and Mopwara to the east.
Ukraine then launched four HIMARS missiles and drones on military vehicles caught in the blockage close to Oktiabrskyi near Rulsk, probably destroying dozens of militsry vehicles and killing one hundred Russian soldiers (one to two battalions). The Russian Ministry of Defense, incidentally, claims to have killed or gravely wounded 945 Ukrainian soldiers in the first four days of the Kursk operation.
Nonetheless, Russian reinforcements were able to continue their advance towards the line of combat contact, and they were able to block Ukrainian advances in three significant areas, forming a ring around north, east, and south Sudzhe: at Bol’shoye Soldatskoye, Korenevo, and Anastas’yevka / Kromstiye Byki. Ukrainians came under fire also at Ivashki.
According to Forbes, the Ukrainian invasion force involved 6,000 men (the Russian MoD yesterday said 1,000: but many more have probably since arrived especially if Russia is correct in its claim to have killed or wounded more than 945) and three brigades (the 22nd mechanized brigade, the 88th mechanized brigade and the 80th Air Assault brigade), using both Soviet and NATO equipment - tanks, mine-clearers, engineering vehicles, Stryker wheeled APCs and German Marders. The most significant risk, Forbes calculates, is encirclement.
It seems probable that Russia will continue to build its “buffer” fortifications in these three areas. On the other hand, Ukraine has the ability, with the use of artillery and Howitzers that it is pulling up into the Sudzhe area from its mainland, to impose fire control on at least two of these three locations. Yet again, one can anticipate that Russia can respond to that challenge quite easily once it has established air control and is using its FAV glide and other bombs appropriately, following which Russia will likely stage counter-offensives and ground operations.
Ukrainian forces over the past day or so have advanced across the border to Melovoy and Guyevo, south of Sudzhe, attacking Plekhovo to the east, and, closer to the south of Sudzhe, attacking Makhnovka and Dmityukov. Judging from the maps I have seen I would say that Ukraine controls over 50% of Sudzhe, in all directions, and that a smaller surrounding area falls into the category of “contested.” Ukraine control extends to the Zaoloshenka district and, further out, to Kasachya Kokna.
From Sudzha, Ukrainian forces have attempted to take Martinovka to the east. This advance was repelled by Russian forces. Ukraine then turned northwards towards Bol’shoye Soldatskoye but, as previously noted, was repelled at that point. Ukrainian forces moved north to Pogrebki and Anastas’yevka where they were also rebuffed. In the meantime Russia has re-established control over an area of Sudzha a little to the east of the district of Leonidovo. Ukraine has established a western flank at Snagost and can exercise fire control from here over Korenovo. Ukrainian forces have also moved up from Lyubimovka to the east of Korenovo, so that Ukraine enjoys fire control over Korenovo from both the east and the south. It is expected that Ukrainian forces will head towards Belitsa which is good way southeast of Sudzha and east of Olanok.
To the south of this combat zone, Russia has taken more border villages namely Popivka and Oleksandrivka and may move on nearby Velyks Pysarivka, perhaps with a view to staging an offensive on Kyrykivka, which would, in effect, cut Kharkiv off from Sumy, to Russia’s advantage. Elsewhere, Russia continues to fight for control over central Chasiv Yar;it has made further advances towards Toretsk; and it has destroyed yet another Ukrainian assault unit on the Tendra Spit in the Dnieper estuary.