Ukraine’s swift incursion into the Russian border region of Kursk shows it has learned valuable lessons from months of war in its eastern provinces, according to military experts.
In an update on Sunday, the Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War pointed to the “stark contrast” between the amount of territory taken by Russia so far this year and by Ukraine in less than a week.
While Russian forces have occupied 1,175 square kilometers of territory across Ukraine between January and July, the ISW said it had seen reports of Ukraine advancing 800 square kilometers over just six days between August 6 to 12.
While ISW analysts said the sheer amount of land taken by Ukrainian forces does not necessarily show the operation was successful, it does show that a “restoring maneuver” can result in considerably faster advances than positional warfare.
Ukraine caught Russia off guard on August 6 by launching a surprise attack on the Kursk border region, defying NATO predictions and seemingly exploiting Russia’s complex military structure.
By August 11, Ukrainian forces had captured as much territory as Russia had in Ukraine this year, Mitch Belcher, a geospatial analyst at the ISW, which tracks battlefield movements and developments, told BI last week.
To make such rapid advances, Ukraine leveraged “maneuver,” the ISW said, referring to a military strategy that involves troop movement, surprise, and initiative to gain an advantage.
“Ukraine’s use of maneuver in Kursk Oblast serves as an example of how Ukrainian maneuver, coupled with operational surprise, can result in comparably sized gains in significantly shorter periods of time with less manpower and materiel,” the ISW said.
Russia has made relatively little progress on the front lines in eastern Ukraine this year, largely using its troops in small, costly actions in a war-of-attrition strategy that some have taken to calling “meat assaults.“
Positional warfare has been a major issue for both sides in the war as they’ve struggled to make any notable breakthroughs this year.
Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk could change the dynamic on the 600-mile front line in Ukraine by forcing troop diversions, the ISW said.
Two unnamed senior US officials told CNN last week that multiple groups of Russian soldiers — of at least 1,000 troops each — had likely already been diverted to Kursk.
An unnamed person familiar with Ukraine’s operation also told The Wall Street Journal last week that Russia had withdrawn up to 5,000 troops from Ukraine to defend Kursk, but would likely need more than 20,000 trained soldiers to retake the region.
The ISW said that Russian redeployments from Ukraine to Kursk could weaken Russia’s ability to sustain offensive operations on its main front lines.
However, it is also unclear how much Ukraine weakened its own front lines by diverting resources to the Kursk offensive.
