Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia is a significant and unprecedented development of the Russo-Ukraine War. Despite initial denials, it is now clear that this incursion was a deliberate strategic choice and not simply the initiative of an opportunistic field commander. Moreover, even though the incursion is currently limited by a small force commitment—although much larger than previous cross-border raids by pro-Ukrainian forces—and the continued refusal of the United States for certain weapons to be used in attacks against Russian territory, it appears that the Ukrainians intend to stay and consolidate their territorial gains.
Much of the commentary and analysis of the Ukrainian incursion has rightfully focused on it being a tactical response to continued Russian attempts to break the stalemate in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Although the Russians have gained very little territory at the cost of extremely high casualties during the current fighting season, they retain an operational advantage due to sheer mass. The Ukrainians are tired, having difficulty reconstituting their units, and facing difficult decisions on the future application of their limited material resources. Additionally, while the West’s provision of weapons and training to the Ukrainians apparently posture them well to fight the Russians to a stalemate, it is hard to see how the current levels of external support and types of weapons being provided would ever be enough to decisively overcome Russia’s operational advantage. In this context, Ukraine’s border incursion makes sense to relieve the pressure its forces are experiencing in Donetsk and to neutralize—in part—said advantage.
In addition to being a suitable tactical response to conditions in eastern Ukraine, however, the incursion is really smart politics on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s part, particularly if the Ukrainians are in fact able to stay. The numerous factors that Zelenskyy probably considered in his overall political logic to authorize the incursion—and in Kursk especially—can be grouped into two overall strategies: the wedge and the hedge.
The Wedge Strategy
While Ukraine’s incursion drove a physical wedge into Russian territory, the term’s applicability in Zelenskyy’s political logic is more about the information environment and Russian public opinion.
Western support to Ukraine’s cause requires Western attention, and this has waned of late. Some of this waning is predictable, as a certain amount of fatigue sets in with external observers of conflicts that last a long time (nearly thirty months in the case of the Russo-Ukraine War). Some has been unanticipated, however, induced no doubt by the Israel-Hamas War and the seemingly more recent and proximate human tragedy playing out in Gaza. Ukraine’s incursion has reclaimed some of the lost attention in the media and policymaking spaces. In the latter, the timing of the incursion is especially sound; governments in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States have recently transitioned or will do so soon, and the US military’s Security Assistance Group–Ukraine just received a new commander who will bring new priorities to the external support effort. For those responsible for guiding Western policy vis-à-vis Ukraine, the audacious cross-border assault—and its initial success—reframe the strategic and political dimensions of the Russo-Ukraine War. In this context, the incursion is a game changer, a fundamental shift to the strategic situation in Ukraine and the public’s consciousness of it.
The public whose views of the war might shift encompasses a variety of audiences. There are two important domestic audiences who will surely be influenced by the incursion—Zelenskyy’s and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s. For the Ukrainians, the incursion is a proverbial shot in the arm that can undo some of their own war fatigue and bolster them to face whatever remains in the current fighting season, as well as another winter without reliable electricity. For the Russians, the incursion penetrates Putin’s tightly controlled and highly curated narrative about the war. The war being brought to Russian doorsteps—beyond the missile and drone attacks that Ukraine prosecuted earlier this year in the Belgorod region—changes the stakes of the war, invites new contemplations on its possible outcome, and weakens Putin’s image as the capable political leader and strong military commander Russians need to ensure their security. The fact that the incursion is occurring in Kursk is icing on the narrative cake from the Ukrainian perspective—not only is it a direct assault on Russian national pride, with Kursk the site of the signature battle of the Soviet counterattack against Nazi Germany during World War II, but it traces Putin’s current failure back to his mismanagement of the Kursk submarine disaster, which occurred twenty-four years ago this week. Granted, there was no place else for the Ukrainians to go for their border incursion, since Kursk is the only territory between the Belorussian frontier and the contested areas of eastern Ukraine. The ancillary narrative benefit has not been lost on the Ukrainians or their supporters, however, with both Zelenskyy and the US government using it in official statements.
These narrative victories are important for Zelenskyy because they allow him to take the initiative away from Putin in what is perceived to be a Russian attritional campaign in Ukraine. Attrition seeks to degrade an enemy’s military capacity to continue fighting. This incursion into Kursk signals an attempt by the Ukrainians to flip the script away from attrition to exhaustion, whereby the goal is to erode the Russians’ will to continue fighting. Although the Russians have long demonstrated that they are a difficult people to exhaust, the loss of territory in Kursk and the consequent stain on Russia’s national pride may be sufficiently unacceptable to increase pressure on Putin to seek a political settlement.
The Hedge Strategy
The prospect of a political settlement illuminates the second strategy within the political logic of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk—the hedge. Zelenskyy is perhaps literally hedging his bets that political settlement is where the war is going, and the incursion sets better conditions for Ukrainian security interests in that setting.
There are two interrelated reasons an eventual political settlement to the Russo-Ukraine War is likely. First, the adage that the best defense is a good offense usually only applies to a combatant force that enjoys a significant material or capability advantage over its opponent, and when both sides clearly understand each other’s intentions. These conditions do not exist in Ukraine. While the Russians and Ukrainians certainly understand each other after thirty months of fighting, the Russian operational advantage is not a decisive one. Additionally, after the provision of HIMARS, ATACMS, and now F-16s, there is not likely to be a different game changer in the types or volume of weapons provided by the West to Ukraine. As such, the best defense in Ukraine—for both sides—will be a good defense, which suggests that the stalemate will continue. This speaks to the second reason a political settlement is likely. Empirically, the longer a conflict lasts, the less likely it becomes that either side enjoys a decisive victory, particularly in conflicts where one side retains the option to revert from conventional fighting to insurgency (as the Ukrainians clearly do). All conflicts must end eventually, and at a certain point political settlement, usually though a third-party guarantor, becomes the only realistic outcome for long-standing conflicts.
Both conflict parties would want to maximize their negotiating positions going into a political settlement, with the relatively ascendant side improving its likely outcome. With the incursion, the Ukrainians are relatively ascendant at this point in time and will retain a strong prospective negotiating position as long as they hold Russian territory. Moreover, the third-party guarantor tends to fix the negotiations against whatever the tactical situation is at the time negotiations start. Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea is de jure illegal under international law. So is Ukrainian occupation of Kursk. Any political settlement would not likely endorse a continued violation of international law, lest it be rejected by the United Nations and other international institutions. This may seem unimportant to opponents of international institutions, but having the UN’s imprimatur is important for the postbellum conflict parties to be legitimized participants in the international system. Accordingly, the Ukrainian incursion into and subsequent occupation of Kursk sets up an exchange to restore both Russian and Ukrainian territorial integrity in a political settlement to the war.
There is one other hedge that Zelenskyy is perhaps playing for with the incursion—provoking a disproportionate response from Putin that galvanizes the West to redouble its support (and possibly even more directly intervene) and forces uncommitted states such as India and China to at least stay on the sidelines (if not lend their influence on a fair settlement process). This hedge would be especially effective against potentially unfavorable electoral outcomes in France and the United States moving forward.
It seems like we have been at the beginning of the end of the Russo-Ukraine War for some time now. If nothing else, the wedge and hedge strategies that can plausibly be inferred in the political logic of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk tilts the endgame—with its likely political settlement—in the Ukrainians’ favor. In so doing, Ukraine raises the likelihood that Kursk will be remembered with decidedly less pride in this newest chapter of Russian political and military history.
Colonel Patrick Sullivan, PhD, is the director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: President of Ukraine