Kursk attack: A military red line has been crossed, so what now?

The UN has once again failed to formulate a position on the invasion of Russian territory by Ukrainian forces. The US and the EU have so far confined themselves to vague statements. Official Kiev at the highest level has also been relatively quiet. The Ukrainian public mainly relies on Russian sources for information, and foreign military experts have also refrained from making detailed predictions.

Apparently, the outside world is still not fully aware of what is going on, hence the muted reactions. The principle of “something needs to be said, but it is not clear what exactly that should be” can be detected. For example, the “paper of record,” The Washington Post, quoting analysts, put forward the hypotheses that one of the reasons for Kiev’s invasion of Kursk Region was to disrupt Russian gas supplies to Western Europe.

The basis for such claims was the situation around the gas metering station near Sudzha, about which much has been written recently. It’s not clear who controls it right now. Sure, if the valve is shut off, the gas really will stop flowing, that’s obvious. However, in order to disrupt supplies, it wasn’t necessary to cross the Russian border. This can easily be done from Ukrainian territory, because that’s where the pipeline passes through. In any case, at the time of writing the fuel is flowing as normal.

This is the cynical peculiarity of our times. Business comes first, and even hostilities do not get in the way.

Meanwhile, beyond that there is relative silence. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is talking about how Russia deserves to be punished, in his view. The West says very little. A comment by the head of the German Bundestag’s defense committee that Kiev could use Leopard tanks on this historic Russian soil doesn’t sound too serious.

It is safe to assume that most of the West’s political leadership didn’t expect such a turn of events. Kiev didn’t consult them or ask their permission. This brings us to the most important point: the nature of the confrontation is changing, and another red line has been erased. There used to be an unspoken rule – the Americans and Western Europeans didn’t want an escalation, let alone a direct conflict with Moscow, so Ukraine was allowed to fight back but not attack; Western weapons are not used on Russian territory and, of course, the border was not to be crossed. In this scenario, the conflict was manageable, and played out within a set framework. You don’t have to be an expert to see that this is now impossible.

In general, this is a trend. All over the world, red lines are being crossed, the old rules of the game are being broken and things are getting out of control.

So for the Russian-Ukraine conflict the choice is really quite simple: there will either be a further escalation of hostilities or negotiations. Or first the former and then the latter. But, of course, it’d be better if we jumped directly to the latter.

This article was first published by Kommersant, and was translated and edited by the RT team.