Ukraine

For Russia, Repelling Incursion Matters Less Than Advancing in Donbas

Author: Editors Desk, Lara Jakes and Eric Schmitt Lara Jakes and Eric Schmitt have covered the West’s military assistance to Ukraine since the war began in 202 Source: N.Y Times

August 28, 2024 at 08:37

A woman about to board an evacuation train in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, on Tuesday. The advance on the city by Russian forces has not been slowed by the Kursk incursion.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Despite its overwhelming firepower, Russia has been unable for weeks to push Ukrainian troops back across the border, with the failure as much the result of priorities as a lack of personnel.

“The aim of the Russian summer offensive is at least to take possession of Pokrovsk,” said Col. Markus Reisner, who oversees force development at Austria’s main military training academy and closely follows the war in Ukraine.The barrage of airstrikes that Russia launched against Ukraine over the past two days, with hundreds of drones and missiles, provided punishing evidence of Moscow’s enduring military might.

Yet for all that firepower, Russia is still struggling to reclaim a small patch of territory in its Kursk region that Ukraine seized earlier this month. And on Tuesday, its military faced attempts by Kyiv’s forces to break into the Belgorod region of Russia.

Precisely why Russia has so far failed to repel the biggest foreign incursion into its country since World War II appears to be not just a matter of personnel and lack of battlefield intelligence, but also of priorities, according to Western officials and military experts.

While caught off guard by the offensive into Kursk, Russia remains more intent on capturing Pokrovsk, a city that serves as a key logistics hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, and its leaders have been reluctant to pull troops from that front, the Western officials and military experts said.

A dark covering conceals the a body lying on a stretcher, on the ground in front of a ruined building. — The covered body of a dead Russian soldier at a Russian border post destroyed by Ukrainian forces during their incursion.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

In the three weeks since the Kursk invasion, officials say that Russia’s slow but steady gains near Pokrovsk have, if anything, picked up.

As Russian troops continue to advance toward Pokrovsk, “any weakening of the Russian momentum caused by any redeployment is not discernible,” Colonel Reisner said.

Even so, Moscow has begun to respond in Kursk, recently moving in thousands of its forces and threatening to retaliate.

The Ukrainian incursion has “had a shocking effect on the Russians,” Christopher G. Cavoli, a U.S. Army general and NATO’s top military commander, said in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations on Aug. 15.

But, he added: “That won’t persist forever. They’ll gather themselves together and react accordingly.”

Russia’s slow start in Kursk

Officials and experts said the Russian forces in Kursk had neither the numbers nor the experience to mount a quick defense when Ukraine’s troops blitzed over the border on Aug. 6. Those who fought did not have enough weapons or other equipment to counter the Ukrainians.

Intelligence provided by Western allies gave Ukraine a clearer picture of where Russian troops were located in the region, helping them to decide what could be captured without much resistance, said Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian and Soviet diplomat who is now a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in Austria.

A tightly packed crowd of people stand before a masked and armed man wearing a blue uniform. A frightened little girl is looking up at him. — Displaced Russians registering at the Kursk Government Circus, where they can receive humanitarian aid and temporary accommodation.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

And it wasn’t initially obvious who was in charge of the Russian response. As of now, it’s the F.S.B. — Russia’s security agency and the successor to the K.G.B. — that is tasked with leading the response, not the Russian military’s general staff, which is in charge in eastern Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 400 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and that 30 pieces of Ukrainian military equipment had been destroyed in Kursk over the previous 24 hours. That assertion also could not be independently verified, but General Syrskyi, the Ukrainian commander, separately acknowledged that Russia so far has deployed 30,000 troops to the region and is sending more every day.

Three men wearing Red Cross T-shirts are helping a woman onto a gurney. An ambulance is parked nearby. — Ukrainian Red Cross workers assisting in the evacuation of a woman from a village near the Russian border, in the Sumy region Ukraine, on Friday.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Russia has deployed mostly reserve units and troops from areas in southern and northeastern Ukraine that are not part of Moscow’s main thrust toward Pokrovsk. American officials assess that Russia needs at least 50,000 troops to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk.

But already, Colonel Reisner said, the Russian reinforcements have “slowed, noticeably” Ukraine’s momentum in the region. And it appears that Moscow has calculated that diverting enough resources to fully repel the incursion from a tactically insignificant area would not be the best use of its military power — especially as it compels Ukraine to expend its own assets to hold the territory it has taken.

“If you throw everything you’ve got to Kursk, then you are playing the Ukrainian game,” Mr. Sokov said.

The risks of collateral damage

With its intense bombardment of Ukraine this week, Russia has demonstrated that it has more than enough attack drones and missiles to devastate Ukrainian troops on its territory — assuming Moscow now has the intelligence to ascertain where they are.

But Mr. Sokov said Moscow may be mindful of harming its own citizens with a scorched-earth response in Kursk. “If you can, you might actually want to be a bit more selective about your targets,” he said.

There is also the specter of an accident at the Kursk nuclear power plant, located about 25 miles from the fighting. Operations at the plant are still active, even though it has no protective dome and is therefore “extremely exposed and fragile,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the United Nations’ atomic agency, said after a visit there on Tuesday.

Mr. Grossi said he was shown fragments of a drone that Russia has claimed tried to attack the plant, although he did not assign blame or responsibility. But if the nuclear reactor was hit, “the consequences could be extremely serious,” he said.

It is possible Ukraine is holding back some of its firepower in case it decides to launch a second surprise attack. Some Russian military bloggers have urged Moscow against sending major reinforcements to Kursk that could leave Russia vulnerable elsewhere, said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

The Russian airstrikes that rained down across Ukraine this week likely sought, in part, to divert global attention from the embarrassment of the incursion in Kursk, Colonel Reisner said.

But the Kremlin has made clear the incursion will not be without consequences.

“Such hostile actions cannot remain without an appropriate response,” Dmitry S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman told reporters on Monday. “There will definitely be a response.”

A beam of bluish light streams into the night sky above a city. — Ukrainian service personnel use a searchlight to look for Russian drones in the sky above Kyiv, on Tuesday.Credit...Gleb Garanich/Reuters

Lara Jakes reported from Rome and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Lara Jakes, based in Rome, reports on diplomatic and military efforts by the West to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. She has been a journalist for nearly 30 years. More about Lara Jakes

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt