Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion Enters Third Month, Has Become ‘Normalized’

Ukraine’s cross-border Kursk incursion, which has resulted in dozens of towns and settlements being occupied in the Russian southern border region, has entered a third month.

It started on August 6th and appeared a shock to both Kremlin leadership and even many Western leaders. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a hawkish think tank in Washington, DC, says that based on its mapping analysis the Ukrainian army has managed to hold on to about 300 square miles of territory at this point.

Russian Defense Ministry

The border region was by all accounts very poorly defended, and it took a significant amount of time for Moscow to send reinforcements to begin pushing the Ukrainians back.

A commander of a Ukrainian battalion inside Kursk told CNN of the latest battlefield situation, “Russian advances are mostly happening on the flanks of our foothold.”

“They keep trying to advance but the gains are incremental, somewhere they manage to take a street in the village,” he continued. “But it goes both ways – we also counterattack and push them back.”

While it’s unclear how many troops Ukraine has committed to holding the region, international reports have estimated Russia has sent some 40,000 of its own forces to take it back. Russia has used both conscripts and reservists, but has not appeared to divert large numbers from front line Ukraine positions in Donetsk.

Ukraine’s main base of operations from within Russia is the town of Sudzha, and a location called Veseloe village is said to be its next takeover goal.

One of Kiev’s main goals for the operation was to force Russia to divert large numbers of its forces from Eastern Ukraine to defend its territory in southern Russia.

Politico reported last month that some of Ukraine’s top military commanders actually strongly opposed President Volodymyr Zelensky’s risky gambit to invade Kursk.

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the UK, opposed the ambitious scheme when Zelensky first broached the idea earlier this year. Zaluzhny opposed the offensive because there was no clear second step once the border was breached. “He never got a clear answer from Zelensky,” one of the Ukrainian officials said. “He felt it was a gamble.”

Russia intensified its efforts to drive Ukrainian forces out of Kursk Oblast on the evening of October 10, advancing deep into the main Ukrainian position and eliminating almost all of the smaller positions in the Glushkovsky District. Russia also intensified its counterattacks… pic.twitter.com/VAlrrMdF6g

— Uncensored News (@uncensorednews9) October 12, 2024

Still, the fact that Ukrainian troops have been able to hold Russian territory for a full two months, and now entering a third, has proven somewhat of a public humiliation for President Putin and the Russian military. Western officials have said Putin is trying to downplay the Kursk saga, however.

“Over time, there is a degree to which the Kursk operation has become normalized,” analyst Mark Galeotti, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), has described.