Ukrainian forces pushed into southwest Russia on August 6 in a surprise attack, and as of this week control almost 500 square miles of Russian territory, according to Ukraine’s army chief.
Experts say it’s unclear how the incursion will end, but they add that it’s been highly successful, both in allowing Ukraine to take the initiative and in embarrassing Russia.
They also said that Ukraine would have been even more successful if the restrictions that many of Ukraine’s major allies, including the US, put on it were dropped.
This would have allowed Ukraine to use the long-range missiles they have supplied it with to hit targets in Russia itself.
Rajan Menon, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, said being able to use those weapons would help Ukraine “in terms of disrupting logistics, in terms of hitting airfields, ammunition, supplies, petroleum oil and lubricants.”
He added that Ukraine has been hitting some of these targets with drones, but being able to do so at a larger scale with Western weaponry would make things even more difficult for Russia.
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider that Russia has been moving forces into the region, and Ukraine using missiles to hit roads and crossroads could disrupt those efforts.
Restricting Ukraine
While countries like the US have removed some restrictions around Ukraine using their weaponry on targets in Russia, those still in place mean it’s unable to use some of its most powerful weapons, including Storm Shadow/SCALP and ATACMS missiles, to target the sources of Russian attacks.
“If we allowed the Ukrainians to reap the suite of benefits that come from using those missiles, that would indeed help the Kursk campaign,” said George Barros, a Russia analyst at DC-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War.
Barros added that Ukraine has had to use significant resources to protect its power, infrastructure, and weaponry from attacks while “the Russians categorically don’t have to really deal with any of that.”
Ukraine has repeatedly asked its allies to remove the restrictions, saying they make its defense much more difficult.
In fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on August 19 that Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk would not have been necessary if its allies had already dropped their restrictions.
He said the incursion was intended to create a buffer zone to prevent more Russian attacks into nearby parts of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine’s success in Kursk showed that Western fears that Russia would escalate the conflict if its supposed red lines were crossed were false.
Meanwhile, warfare analysts have previously told BI that in launching the incursion into Kursk, Ukraine likely wanted to stretch Russia’s forces and give fresh motivation to its troops and allies.
Barros said it’s not clear how the fast-moving operation would end, or what Russia or Ukraine will decide to do next.
But he said it was a boost for Ukraine to have taken the initiative after months of being stuck in a largely defensive position.
“It is now no longer the Ukrainians lying on their back for nine-plus months at a time simply trying their best to triage,” he said.
Menon described it as a “moment of embarrassment” for Russia because its response both in evacuating people and dealing with the incursion “has been disastrous.”
“I mean, there’s just no other way of putting it,” he said.
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