Analysis: Russia’s Ukraine bet punctures Putin’s invincibility window

It is yet another decisive move in a conflict that is punctuated by annual reminders of how fragile Vladimir Putin’s Russia really is.

Two months ago, as Russian troops moved into the Kharkiv region, Kiev was watching its borders, worried about where else Russia might find vulnerabilities. But Ukraine appears to have looked at the map, decided that Russia was equally exposed, and turned Moscow’s bet on its head.

A week later, and regardless of the final outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kiev’s initially perplexing and perhaps even hasty decision to send thousands of troops to the Kursk region and beyond is paying clear dividends.

For the second time in just over a year, the Kremlin is facing a hostile force marching south from its territory, and there is little it can do about it. Last June, it was the rogue mercenaries of the Wagner group, heading to Rostov and the surrounding area to decapitate the Russian high command. Now it is Ukraine’s own military, advancing on what it claims is 1,000 square kilometers of border territory.

Some analyses over the weekend put the number at about a third of that total. Nevertheless, the ability of Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi to even raise that claim is a notable victory in the information war for Kiev, even as Moscow severely limits the information to which Russians have access.

“Bold, brilliant, beautiful,” was what veteran US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called Ukraine’s cross-border operation during a visit to Kiev on Monday (12). Meanwhile, US Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal called it “historic” and a “seismic breakthrough”.

The events are remarkably similar in the way they expose the gulf between the facade of impenetrability the Kremlin tries to portray and the disorganized reality of its power.

And while Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow fell apart when he finally seemed to realize he was alone — and had angered Putin rather than gained his approval to confront the failed high command head-on — Ukraine’s forces appear to have little beyond their own supply lines and ambition to counter.

Ukraine’s lightning advance is yet another example of the dexterity and mobility of its forces in war, in contrast to Moscow’s preference for slow, sustained attacks in one location.

It is deliberately unclear exactly where Ukrainian forces are. Videos have emerged from cities well inside Russia, but without context. One appeared overnight in Lgov, about 40km from the border, with a soldier saying he had promised his mother he would not go far.

It’s also unclear where Ukrainian forces are establishing themselves and where they are just passing through. The lack of transparency in the Russian system—where mistakes and problems are hidden rather than confronted head-on—works in Kiev’s favor. It’s unlikely that Moscow, or even the governor of Kursk, knows the full picture of the mess they’re in.

And the news the Kremlin is receiving is unusually grim. When Kursk’s acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, told Putin on state TV on Monday (12) that 28 settlements were under Ukrainian control, with the fate of 2,000 people uncertain, and 121,000 residents evacuated, it was likely staged and pre-recorded, like most of Putin’s televised meetings.

But to what end? Putin has turned the question back to his military chiefs, whom he has been slowly decimating over the 30 months of ups and downs of this war. They clearly do not yet have the solution.

Yet Putin is still trying to play the role of czar, judging between chaotic departments and failing, despite being assured on Wednesday (7) by his chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, that the Ukrainian advance had been halted. The last time this kind of invasion of Russia happened, Joseph Stalin was in charge, and he did more than televise his failed leadership.

Two questions remain. The first concerns the ultimate fate of Ukraine’s incursion. Do they intend to try to hold even the smallest amount of territory? Do they intend to continue advancing through unprotected spaces? And how much firepower, manpower, and precious Western equipment is Ukraine willing to devote to this effort?

The merits of the strike are less questionable than they were a week ago when it was launched. Putin has a bloody nose. But Ukraine’s ultimate goal needs to be as carefully planned as the invasion to capitalize on Kiev’s success.

The second question is what impact this will have on Ukraine’s most challenged frontline in Donbas? Over the past week, successes in the Kursk region have been interspersed with worse news from Toretsk or near Pokrovsk, as Russian forces continue their costly, bloody and inexorable advance. No matter how small the village, Moscow keeps attacking.

So far, Ukraine’s hopes that the Kursk operation would lead to the withdrawal of units from Donbass to support Russia’s borders have not borne much fruit. As images continue to emerge of poorly trained Chechen troops being taken prisoner en masse by the Ukrainians advancing on Kursk, it is clear that Russia has committed its least effective units to combat.

They may choose to change this approach. Putin also entrusted the operation to the FSB, the domestic security service that also controls the border guard, which set up a “counterterrorism operation”. This has previously been used to tackle Islamist insurgencies, not Ukrainian armoured columns. This too may have been too limited.

Labor crisis

But then the crisis looms for Kiev. Where does that leave their forces in a month’s time? Was the talk of a manpower crisis in recent months because they were secretly keeping forces in reserve for this attack?

Do they derive enough strategic advantage from these advances that Moscow’s view of them as defeated adversaries changes? Does the advance cause their Western backers to decide that their support is actually paying off?

Regardless of how effectively Ukraine answers these questions, Russia has, for the second time in 15 months, been publicly humiliated. First, it was Putin’s own loyalists, selfishly turning against corruption and mismanagement.

This time, it is Putin’s own FSB, which has failed to maintain control of the borders in the war Putin has chosen. This falling tree may not make a sound in Russia’s politically managed forest. However, it probably hit others as it fell.

One thing is certain, however. Both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Putin have referenced the incursion in terms of their role in the negotiations. Putin said Ukraine was trying to improve its position ahead of the talks — negotiations that still appear to lack an agenda, a date or any sense of trust between the parties.

In turn, Zelensky said on Monday (12): “How useful this [incursão] may be to bring peace closer.” He added: “Russia must be forced to peace if Putin wants to continue waging war so desperately.”

Kiev knows that it cannot enter into negotiations with Russia without a strong hand, as the Kremlin’s extremely deceitful negotiating style has proven that they simply postpone negotiations unless they urgently need something from their interlocutor.

Still, even if Syrskyi has only half the thousand square kilometers he claims, the change of season into autumn is at most six weeks away, and with it the muddy slowdown of the battlefield. The failure of last summer’s counteroffensive was eclipsed by the sudden success of this August incursion.

The grim misadventures of last winter are not yet behind us, but the next one may approach with a better hand, and, at the very least, the idea of ​​the Kremlin’s invulnerability – first shattered in its initial failed invasion – shattered for the third time in this war.