Europe

Military analysis: Kursk incursion heaps pressure on Ukraine’s east

Russia has yet to divert troops from fiercest battles in Donetsk region to defend its own territory

Christopher Miller in Sumy region
Tue Aug 20 2024 - 13:48

Kyiv’s forces have in two weeks seized more land in Russiathan Moscow has in Ukraine all year – transforming perceptions about their capabilities and boosting morale among Ukrainians.

But that stunning operational success has yet to deliver one crucial objective: diverting Russia’s manpower and easing pressure in the hottest battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow is steadily advancing.

Russian soldiers are still grinding their way through Ukrainian defences, capturing villages and towns and bringing Moscow closer to its stated goal of complete control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

On Monday, Russian troops appeared to have captured nearly all of the town of Niu-York, entered nearby Toretsk and were encroaching on the logistical hub of Pokrovsk.

One Ukrainian artillery brigade commander in eastern Ukraine said part of the reason for the Russian advance was Kyiv moving its scarce resources north.

His troops were back to rationing shells for their cannons – the first time since US aid to Ukraine was held up by Congress – because ammunition had been reallocated for the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukraine has also moved upwards of 10,000 troops, including many of its elite airborne forces and mechanised brigades, from Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, where the fiercest battles are under way, according to officials involved with the operation.

At least 20 Ukrainian units are confirmed to be involved in the Kursk incursion, according to military analysts. Some of those were meant to be reserve forces to help shore up fracturing defensive lines and provide a reprieve for troops who have fought without rest for months or even years.

Even in the days before setting off for Kursk, Ukrainian defences in Donetsk region were “showing cracks”, said one senior Ukrainian official familiar with military operations.

He said Russian forces had achieved “tactical success” in Donetsk and more advances were likely unless the situation turned around.

With much of its reserves directed to Kursk, Ukraine will struggle to fill defensive gaps and counter various Russian threats, said Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, a Poland-based group that tracks the war.

“Russia doesn’t have trouble mobilising troops whereas Ukraine still has trouble mobilising the number needed to hold and conduct operations in Donetsk,” he said.

Officers and infantry troops on the eastern front also now face even longer frontline stints without rotations, several said.

Two lieutenants serving in a brigade that had been on the front in Donetsk region before being sent to Kursk said that in more than two years of fighting they had each only had a month-long break.

Another soldier said he had gone months fighting near Toretsk without any rest before being ordered to Kursk. “Nobody can ask [for a rotational break] now,” he said. “We were the reserves but now we are here.”

While Kyiv does not comment on casualties, the incursion has already come at a material cost: Ukraine lost at least 51 pieces of valuable military equipment, including German Marder vehicles, US-made Stryker vehicles and Himars rockets, compared with 27 such losses on the Russian side, according to the open-source intelligence researcher Naalsio.

US officials said this week without providing details that they had seen signs of Russia moving forces from the south and east of Ukraine north to Kursk.

But those appeared to be moved from the southern axis and occupied Crimea – locations that were not likely to have an impact on the situation in Donetsk. The Lithuanian defence ministry said some troops had also been moved from Russia’s Kaliningrad region.

Ukrainian soldiers and military analysts tracking the war said there had been no clear indication that Russia was moving a consequential amount of forces from the hottest area on the frontline in its east.

“Despite the successes of the defenders in the Kursk region, the Russians have not yet transferred their troops en masse from here,” said Ukraine’s 47th Mechanised Brigade. “Its main strike force remains.”

Russia’s forces appeared to have occupied all but a small district of Niu-York on Monday, according to Deep State, a Ukrainian analytical group with close ties to Ukraine’s defence ministry. The Russians had also crept closer to Pokrovsk.

Home to more than 60,000 residents, Pokrovsk is a significant logistical hub for Ukraine’s military and a linchpin for its defence of the rest of Donetsk region.


​​​​​​​

“Iran is a great case study to actually look at this now powerful and often-used tool of American foreign policy, and to examine, does it work and does it not work?” said Nasr, a Middle East expert and SAIS faculty member and former SAIS dean.

To be sure, Western sanctions have reduced Russia’s revenues and dented its GDP, albeit to a lesser extent than many had hoped. But the longer the global financial system is used as a tool of economic warfare, the more governments and businesses in third-party countries will look for alternatives to the dollar, euro, and the SWIFT international payment system. 2

While sanctions may be an effective short-term tactic, their impact on the targeted parties tends to wane over time, even as the burden on the countries enforcing them increases. Should the Russia sanctions regime significantly erode the dollar’s prominence in international financial markets, the cost to the US and global economies could far exceed its benefits.

On April 13, Iran launched an unprecedented retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel, leading the U.S. and its allies to reach once again for their favorite weapon of war—sanctions.

This knee-jerk reaction was as predictable as it was ill-founded, according to the scholarly research. In Nicholas Mulder's 2022 treatise The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, he traces the history of sanctions from the blockades in World War I to today's morass of economic sanctions. Mulder concludes that "the historical record is relatively clear: most economic sanctions have not worked."

Mulder's treatise was followed by the book Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests by Agathe Demarais. Drawing on her experience as an economic policy adviser for the diplomatic corps of the French Treasury, Demarais observes that sanctions tend to unite rather than isolate countries that are at odds with the U.S. and its allies, thereby transforming the geopolitical landscape and global economy to the detriment of U.S. influence.

​​​​​​​ Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.

https://www.ft.com/content/5183dd85-...5-1abc78f084ad




Sanctions on Russia are having no impact outside the west and attempts to halt the flow of business merely redirect it elsewhere, the chair of Dubai’s main trading hub has said. “Sanctions slow the economy, never stop it,” said Hamad Buamim, chair of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, a leading United Arab Emirates free trade zone that says it hosts more than 24,000 businesses. He is also the former president of Dubai’s chamber of commerce. “Trade continues flowing, it just flows in a different way,” he told the Financial Times in an interview. Buamim’s comments come as Dubai leverages its geographical position between east and west to cement itself as a node for world commerce at a time when sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine, economic protectionism and US-China tensions are reshaping global trade. Dubai is seen as a beneficiary of US and European attempts to isolate Russia’s economy, as oil traders relocated from Geneva to the UAE after Switzerland joined the sanctions imposed on Moscow. Energy is the most important sector for the DMCC, according to Buamim, with some 3,000 energy companies registered in the zone.

​​​​​​​

More than two weeks into its surprise offensive in western Russia, Ukraine’s advance has slowed, with its troops making only marginal gains around territory they already control.

But more than 200 miles to the southeast, another offensive is gaining momentum: Russia’s drive toward Pokrovsk, a stronghold in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. In recent days, Moscow’s troops have seized at least three settlements and reached the outskirts of a town along a railroad to Pokrovsk, a logistics hub for the Ukrainian Army in the region.

The Russian advance has put the Ukrainians in the precarious position of defending one critical front while attempting to press forward on another, all with limited troop numbers and weaponry. President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that Ukraine was working on boosting its forces in the east with more men and weapons to resist the Russian advance.

Here’s a look at the overall situation on the battlefield.

Russia pushes toward Pokrovsk

This week, Russian forces have captured three more villages near Pokrovsk, according to DeepState, an analytical group with close ties to the Ukrainian Army, expanding their hold on the area. Moscow’s troops are now about eight miles from the center of Pokrovsk.

“They’re now within artillery range of the city,” Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the military podcast War on the Rocks on Wednesday.

Pokrovsk, a city of more than 40,000 inhabitants, is a transit hub for Ukrainian forces in the east. It sits on a key road, Highway T054, linking several cities that form a defensive arc protecting the part of the Donetsk region that is still held by Ukraine.

“The loss of Pokrovsk would be fairly significant to Ukraine’s ability to maintain defenses overall in Donetsk,” Mr. Kofman said. “Its loss wouldn’t be disastrous but it would have downstream effects for the overall organization of defense.”

A map of the battlefield produced by the Finland-based Black Bird Group, which tracks developments in the conflict, appears to indicate that Russian troops have approached the final line of Ukrainian anti-tank ditches and trenches near the town. They have already breached several defensive layers during their advance, the Black Bird Group said, although these were less densely fortified.

Local Ukrainian authorities have called on Pokrovsk’s residents to evacuate within the next two weeks, before conditions worsen significantly. Families with children have already been ordered to leave. But Serhii Dobriak, the head of Pokrovsk’s military administration, reported that the evacuation pace was not fast enough, with only 500 to 600 people departing daily, though the authorities could bring out at least 1,000 a day.

“People don’t want to evacuate,” Volodymyr Nikulin, a police officer in Pokrovsk, said in a text message. “This is not a surprise. People in these cities used to live in war since 2014. They’ve experienced so many war atrocities. They just hope to survive.”

Niu-York is in peril

To the northeast of Pokrovsk, around the towns of Toretsk and Niu-York, Russian forces have been slowly but steadily gaining ground, sending waves of troops in bloody attacks.

Footage geolocated by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, shows Moscow’s troops are on the doorstep of Toretsk and now control most of Niu-York, which took its name in the 19th century and is sometimes referred to as New York. A medic from a brigade fighting near Niu-York, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said this week that Ukrainian soldiers still controlled a small part of the town but were under relentless attacks.

Ukrainian positions in Niu-York and Toretsk protect another city in the defensive arc: Kostiantynivka, about nine miles to the northwest.

Analysts say one aim of Ukraine’s offensive into western Russia has been to force Moscow to divert troops from the eastern front lines. But the Kremlin appears to have largely resisted such a redeployment so far, prioritizing its military effort in the east.

“The Russians have hardly moved any forces from here,” Maksym Zhorin, the deputy commander of the Third Separate Assault Brigade, which is fighting in the east, told Ukrainian media on Wednesday. The Ukrainian offensive in Russia has had little impact on the fighting in the Donetsk region, he said.

Ukraine’s advance in Russia slows

Ukrainian troops made quick gains after they launched their surprise cross-border offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region on Aug. 6, capturing many settlements and the town of Sudzha.

Mr. Zelensky, who said on Thursday that he had visited the Ukrainian side of the border area where his army attacked, has claimed that Ukraine now controls about 480 square miles of Russian territory. If confirmed, that’s roughly the amount of land that Russian forces seized in Ukraine this year up to July, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

But most of these gains were made in the first week of the offensive. Over the past week, Ukraine has only marginally advanced around the bulge of territory it seized, pushing into a few villages.

Analysts say this is because the Ukrainian forces are coming up against reinforcements that Moscow has sent to the area, mainly from units stationed in Russia. Vasyl Halamai, a Ukrainian platoon commander, told Ukrainian television that Russian forces were “significantly increasing artillery fire and the resistance of infantry units has increased.”

Materiel losses for Ukraine in the assault are also mounting. Naalsio, an open-source intelligence researcher analyzing combat footage, said on Wednesday that Ukraine had lost at least 65 pieces of military equipment, including four U.S.-made Stryker armored vehicles, compared with 40 such losses for the Russians.