Why Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has failed to distract Russia from Donbas push

The Ukrainian army remains in control of more than 1,000 square kilometres of land in Russia’s Kursk region, almost a month into a brazen cross-border incursion that offered Kyiv’s forces a much-needed morale boost – and dealt Russian President Vladimir Putin a humiliating blow. 

Along eastern Ukraine’s sprawling front line, however, the Russian army has been notching up territorial gains, cutting deeper towards the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk province, a crucial supply and reinforcement hub for Ukraine’s frontline troops, and claiming the capture of a nearby village on Wednesday. 

Moscow’s troops have moved to within 10 kilometres of the strategic city, the UK’s military intelligence reported on Monday as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky conceded that the situation on the ground was “difficult”. 

“Russian goals have not changed,” Zelensky told reporters, noting that the assault on Pokrovsk began long before Ukraine’s Kursk offensive. To some, his words amounted to an admission that Kyiv had failed to alter Moscow’s goals. 

In the immediate aftermath of Ukraine’s brazen cross-border offensive, military experts quizzed by FRANCE 24 agreed that the operation’s primary aim appeared to be the redeployment of Russian troops engaged in the Donbas. 

In that respect, Ukraine’s “provocation” has failed, Putin told Russian media on Monday, boasting that Moscow’s forces were advancing in the Donbas at the fastest pace “in a long time”. 

While the Kursk offensive did force Russia to redeploy troops from parts of the front line, analysts caution, those movements did not affect the battle for Pokrovsk. 

In fact, “Russian operations are now solely concentrated in the Pokrovsk region,” said Gustav Gressel, a Ukraine war analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, adding that Moscow’s forces were “kind of freezing other fronts”.  

Before the Kursk offensive, “the Russians were advancing on seven fronts in the Donbas", added Huseyn Aliyev, a Ukraine war expert at the University of Glasgow. “And now it’s only Pokrovsk, while some troops elsewhere are being redeployed to Kursk.” 

‘Strategically misguided’ 

Such manoeuvres suggest there has indeed been a “Kursk effect” in the Donbas. The trouble for Kyiv is that the effect is not being felt where it matters most. 

Indeed, a Russian breakthrough in Pokrovsk “could force a broader Ukrainian retreat in the Donetsk region", warned Will Kingston-Cox, a Russia expert at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona, such is the town’s strategic importance. 

A transport hub with a pre-war population of 50,000, many of whom have now fled, Pokrovsk is “an important supply hub, with several roads and rail lines converging there", said Veronika Poniscjakova, an international security expert at the University of Portsmouth who is closely monitoring the war in Ukraine. 

If the city falls, “the Russians will have an open road to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk", added Aliyev, for whom Ukraine had virtually no chance of stopping Moscow’s advance in Pokrovsk region. 

In fact, the invading army may not even need to occupy Pokrovsk to wreak havoc on Ukraine’s supply chain and deal a severe blow to its forces, argued Gressel. 

“They don’t have to conquer the city physically to make logistics complicated for Ukraine,” he said. “As long as they go close enough to the city.” 

Gressel noted that Ukraine’s lightning attack in Kursk region had drawn Kyiv’s “most mobile reserves” away from the Donbas, where they may have been better suited to defensive operations requiring an ability to rapidly fall back and regroup.  

In that respect, “the Kursk incursion appears to have been strategically misguided”, said Kingston-Cox, describing the operation as a “symbolic victory” that has proved to be “overoptimistic” in terms of its desired impact on the Donbas. 

Bargaining chip 

Others have cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to stem the Russian advance on Pokrovsk even if it hadn’t committed some of its best troops to the Kursk advance. 

“I don’t think those units would have been capable of altering the balance of forces in the Donbas,” said military analyst Sim Tack, who has monitored the conflict since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. 

Ukraine’s army leadership may have reasoned that “its troops had a better chance of securing victory in Kursk region than halting the Russian advance in Donbas", added Aliyev. 

Assessing the success or failure of Ukraine’s surprise offensive should not be based solely on its repercussions on the eastern front, argued Tack, for whom the control of Russian territory gives Kyiv a “bargaining chip” for future negotiations. 

Zelensky stated during an interview with NBC on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces were “conceptually” planning to hold territory in Kursk for an unspecified period of time, reiterating that the incursion was part of Ukraine’s “victory plan” to end the war on just terms and bring Russia to the negotiating table. 

Whether that bargaining chip has any real value remains in doubt, cautioned Poniscjakova, noting that Putin has made clear his priority is completing the annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk province, which Moscow claims as its own. 

Putin has notably played down the significance of Ukraine’s incursion, the first on Russian soil since World War II, appearing in no rush to chase out the intruders while his forces press on with their assaults in eastern Ukraine. 

His stance sends a message both to his domestic audience and to Kyiv, minimising the Russian army’s setbacks at home and stressing that Moscow will not give up on its plans for territorial conquest in Ukraine. 

“By focusing on Donbas, Russia is making clear that it is not willing to make a lot of concessions in exchange for Kursk,” said Kingston-Cox. “That’s because Donetsk region is the main objective.” 

This article has been translated from the original in French.