Over a month ago, on 6 August, Ukraine launched a major incursion into the Russian border region of Kursk. Despite initial advances, this offensive was doomed to fail.
Indeed, there was something of a kamikaze attack about it, as some observers, this one included, pointed out at the time.
Fielding brigades of its most experienced and best-equipped troops for an assault that had nowhere to go and could not possibly draw on sufficient reserves, Vladimir Zelensky’s regime did not simply gamble, but invited certain defeat. In the process, it weakened its defences against steady and accelerating Russian advances on other parts of the front line. It also irritated its Western sponsors, who – overall – were perplexed by this waste of scarce Ukrainian resources, that in many cases were foreign.
Ukraine has indeed managed to inflict suffering and damage, especially on civilians. Kiev’s probable aim of reaching the Kursk nuclear power station to execute some kind of blackmail has, however, not been realised. That the ‘Kursk Kamikaze’ was going to fail was clear from the beginning.
This failure is not the same as Russia finally liquidating this temporary occupation of a minuscule percentage (0.0058823529%) of its territory. While that moment is still in the future, the cost of the Kursk incursion for Ukraine is already rising, day by day and relentlessly. Three key aspects of this ongoing failure are especially important: First, according to the Zelensky regime key cadre Mikhail Podoliak, the Kursk operation aimed to compel Moscow to negotiate an end to the conflict on Ukrainian conditions. He also implied that Kiev was occupying Russian territory for a later swap. Given Russia’s military capabilities and reserves, that was always a bizarrely unrealistic idea. But it has not simply failed to come true; instead, the Kursk Kamikaze has produced the opposite: a further hardening of Moscow’s position.
President Vladimir Putin has reiterated Russia’s longstanding position, namely that it is principally ready for negotiations. Yet, he has also made clear that they cannot begin before the elimination of the Kursk incursion. While Western information war narratives desperately try to depict his statements as flip-flopping under Ukrainian pressure, the opposite is true: In reality, the Russian president has expressed his hope that after a Ukrainian defeat in Kursk region, Moscow’s opponents will sober up sufficiently to be ready for a realistic compromise.
Second, another aim of the Ukrainian offensive was to force the Russian military to withdraw forces from other parts of their frontline, especially around the city of Pokrovsk, about 50km to the northwest of Donetsk. Yet that, too, has not happened. Instead, the Ukrainian authorities are evacuating Pokrovsk, and Russia is about to take the city.
The result: a “stampede,” in which Russian attackers are driving Ukrainian defenders from their positions several times, not per week, but per day. Another Ukrainian soldier – a veteran of the 2023 battle for the town of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) that lasted almost a year – expects Pokrovsk to fall rapidly, writing that he has “never seen anything like this,” with “everything falling apart so quickly.” Things are not merely bad, in other words. They are even worse than before.
While Pokrovsk is the single-most obvious proof that the Kursk incursion was not a good idea at all, Russia is making accelerating advances in other places as well, adding up to “Moscow’s biggest gains since October 2022.” The Daily Express headline “Ukraine panic as bombshell map shows Russia making huge gains” may be a little sensationalist, but there really is something sensational about just how badly Kiev’s calculations have backfired.
Third, by its incursion across the Russian border, Kiev also wanted to demonstrate that Moscow’s red lines never matter and that, therefore, the West, that is, Washington, should disregard not just some – as of now – but all of them. Specifically, the Ukrainian leadership is trying to cajole the outgoing administration of president Joe Biden to let Kiev use American weapons – especially ATACMS – for even deeper strikes into Russian territory.
In essence, this is another Ukrainian attempt to achieve full compliance from its Western sponsors: Wag the dog on steroids. Or, as Ukraine’s reliably over-explicit now-former foreign minister Dmitry Kuleba has told Polish TV: “The greatest task is to persuade our [Western] allies not to think about Moscow’s reaction.”
Berlin, Paris, London, Washington, listen up: Russia perhaps striking back at your militaries, countries and populations? Just don’t even think about it and simply do what Kiev tells you, because, obviously, why would you not trust the regime that sabotaged Minsk II, missed an early peace at Istanbul, had a hand in bombing European infrastructure, and has now, once again, proven its professional-grade lack of foresight and due diligence by launching the Kursk Kamikaze? Outside the US, only Ukrainian “diplomacy” can be this blunt and self-defeating.
Yet, at home in Ukraine, even media largely streamlined under Zelensky, admit that the latter will soon have his “last chance” to persuade Biden, namely on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
But the ultimate irony here is that even if Kiev got permission for deeper strikes into Russia with Western weapons, this – as the crossing of so many red lines before – would not save the Zelensky regime. But it would make Moscow even more intransigent and unforgiving once the details of Ukraine’s – and the West’s – defeat must be settled.
In view of the predictable and yet still shocking catastrophic record of Kiev’s Kursk Kamikaze, it is little wonder that criticism of its creators is growing, both in and outside Ukraine. But what is especially dangerous for the Zelensky regime is the fact that the two are coming together: In the past, mainstream Western media have protected Zelensky and his team by ignoring their critics in Ukraine. But things are different now. The Financial Times, for instance, has dedicated a long article to the “backlash” faced by the Ukrainian leader. Its author, Christopher Miller, formerly a reliable info war booster of all things Ukrainian and Zelensky, now gives no quarters, noting a “barrage of criticism from [Ukrainian] soldiers, lawmakers and military analysts” hitting the West’s former darling.
And there it is, the final irony of Ukraine’s massive exercise in self-diversion: When the Kursk Kamikaze was launched, the usual Western fantasists speculated that it would be “embarrassing” for the Russian leadership and thus – somehow – make a difference in Kiev’s favour. Yet, the worst embarrassment of any military operation is always reserved for the loser, especially when it is obvious that the whole enterprise was totally misconceived and absolutely reckless from the get-go.
If anyone will feel shockwaves shaking his power from the fallout of the Kursk Kamikaze, it will be Zelensky, not Putin. And Zelensky will have only himself to blame. Once again.
*Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian and expert on international politics.