In Kursk, the Ukrainian invasion is back

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals have an artful knack for keeping the Russian military bear off-balance. On Sunday, they renewed their offensive in the Russian Kursk Oblast, once again catching the Russian high command, Kremlin, and many pundits by surprise.

Reports of a demoralized Ukrainian army fighting to retain terrain captured during the August Kursk offensive — of which at least 40 percent has been lost — have circulated among western media and Russian milbloggers since November. So too reports that Ukraine’s 155th Mechanized Brigade — trained and equipped by France — was under-resourced in “first person view drones or sufficient[ly] trained pilots.” And that 50 soldiers had deserted the unit while training in France and another that 1,700 soldiers refused orders to transfer to the unit.

Nonetheless, as Gen. George Patton once said, “When in doubt, attack!” And that is exactly what Ukraine did, along three fronts — southern Berdin, central Russkoye Porechnoye and central Novosotnitsky.

Ukraine is using British supplied Challenger 2 tanks and extensive electronic warfare operations to blind Russian drones, allowing sappers to open lanes in minefields to facilitate their advance. The success or failure of the renewed offensive remains to be determined, but one thing is certain — it got the Kremlin’s attention.

And it likely got the attention of the incoming Trump administration as well.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, President-elect Donald Trump's incoming Ukraine envoy, recently postponed a fact-finding trip to Kyiv and other European capitals until after Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has hastily dispatched to Kursk Gen. Yunis-Bek Yevkurov, one of Vladimir Putin’s top generals, to organize and lead the Russian defense. Yevkurov was promoted by Putin in December and had been tasked with managing “Russia’s border defenses and Africa mercenary projects.”

Given the recent loss of Syrian airfields and seaports, operations in Africa have more-or-less come to a halt. This freed up the general for emergency duty.

But it does not matter which general Putin, General Valeri Gerasimov or Minister of Defense Andrey Belousov, puts in command. Russian human wave "meat assault" tactics are still the Kremlin’s first resort, given the level of talent and training provided to its conscripts, mobilized reservists, penal colonists and foreign fighters.

There is only so much Yevkurov can do with an army relegated to fighting with weapons from the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (Mosin-Nagant 3-line rifle), World War I (Degtyaryov machine gun) and the Korean War (T-54/55 and PT-76 tanks), pulled from dilapidated storage facilities, film studios and museums.

As former-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” This is what Yevkurov has to work with.

The Russian army still fights a war of attrition, utilizing mass in the form of infantry and artillery. North Korea has plenty of both and a leader in Kim Jong Un who is equally callous concerning the lives of his soldiers and people. Reports now indicate that North Korean M1989 Koksan self-propelled howitzers are "in the fight" after initially being reported seen moving on rail cars towards Russia in November.

Moscow’s technique of "try harder" is only resulting in more casualties. On Tuesday, Russian casualties surpassed the 800,000 mark (1,970 for that day). Those numbers now include more than 3,800 North Korean casualties and an untold number of foreign fighters from Chechnya.

Putin, Kim and Chechen leader Ramzán Kadírov do not care. Their primary focus remains the complete destruction of Ukraine, its people and its culture.

The Russians have tried to balance out their failures on the battlefield by repeatedly attacking Ukrainian civilian population centers throughout the country. Moscow is using ballistic and hypersonic missiles and drone attacks that are being fired from Biden administration-imposed areas of sanctuary within the Russian interior.

Modern weapons of warfare are used to target civilians while brute force remains the primary course of action in the close fight. Yet slowly, and at a horrific cost in human life on both sides, Russian forces are incrementally advancing towards Kurakhove, Toretsk, Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk.

Sunday’s renewed Kursk offensive could have several possible rationales. One would be to force the Russian army to reposition forces from the Donbas to defend against additional loss of Russian territory. Another may be a preemptive strike against a combined Russian-North Korean assault to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk.

It could also be an opportunity to exploit what intelligence determined to be a vulnerability: an increasingly combat-ineffective North Korean contingent effectively rendering the Russian defenses vulnerable.

Or it could be, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday, that Ukraine's position in Kursk was critical to any future negotiations. "Their position in Kursk is an important one," Blinken said, "because certainly it's something that would factor in any negotiation that may come about in the coming year."

The best answer is all of the above — and likely more.

The Ukrainian military inflicted an average of 1,180 casualties per day in 2024 — 2,030 casualties alone on Nov. 29 — but it is unable to stem the flow of Russian forces and equipment into Ukraine. For the soldiers in the trenches, it has become Groundhog Day — repelling relentless ground assaults multiple times a day, then falling back to the next battle position. Defense has become the rule in the Donbas.

Interdiction can change that. As we have written on multiple occasions, providing Ukraine precision deep-strike weapons to target and destroy Russian, North Korean and Chechen troops, their equipment, weapons and ammunition in their assembly areas before they enter Ukraine would provide room to maneuver for subsequent offensive operations.

Defeat mass, and Ukraine defeats Russia. Interdiction defeats mass and sets conditions to push Russia out of Ukraine.

Ukraine can only bring the war to a winning conclusion through offensive operations supported by the U.S. and NATO.

Security guarantees are meaningless to Ukraine as evidenced by the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Winning solves the Russia problem – not a peace plan Putin has no intent to honor. Putin has made it clear, he wants to destroy Ukraine.

Zelensky understands that. Now Kellogg must convince Trump.

The renewed ground offensive in the Kursk Oblast, coupled with recent deep drone strikes targeting the Kristall oil storage facility near Engels airfield and the destruction of two Russian anti-missile Pantsir-S1 systems and one OSA anti-aircraft vehicle in the Kherson Oblast are evidence that Ukraine can take the fight to Russia — and that Kyiv will not submit to naked Russian aggression.

As Patton famously told the Soldiers of the U.S. Third Army in 1944, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.” A peace deal with Putin essentially equates to a tie, if not a strategic loss. It is time America got back into the business of winning.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.

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