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KYIV — Six months ago, Ukrainian forces stunned the Kremlin and their own allies by storming across the frontier in a surprise counteroffensive that smashed into Russia’s Kursk region.
Two weeks after that initial attack, Vitaly was deployed to the region by the Ukrainian military and has been fighting there ever since, alongside some of Ukraine’s best-trained soldiers.
“We’re still there,” Vitaly, who asked that he only be identified by his first name, told POLITICO. “We brought war to the territory of the aggressor; we got a lot of prisoners that were later used to release our guys from Russia’s captivity. We forced Russia to withdraw some troops from Ukraine to fight us.”
The incursion also set off a fierce debate within Ukraine as to whether it was worth the cost.
Some, like Vitaly, are convinced the attack made sense.
His views are shared by the Ukrainian General Staff, which on Thursday said Russia has lost some 40,000 troops in Kursk, with more than 16,000 killed in action and another 900 captured as prisoners of war.
The Kremlin had to bring in some 12,000 North Korean troops to help it push the Ukrainian army out of Russian territory. But after losing some 4,000 dead and wounded, the Korean troops were withdrawn from the front.
“One of their three brigades has been eliminated, others lost the ability to keep fighting and were withdrawn,” the Ukrainian General Staff said.
Ukraine has not revealed its own losses, but it has reportedly suffered hundreds of casualties and lost about half of the 1,000 square kilometers it originally seized in Kursk. Ukrainian villages in the nearby Sumy region have been turned to rubble by Russian glide bombs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insists the incursion has been a success, and has hinted that Ukraine’s continued control of Russian territory might give Kyiv leverage in any peace negotiations with Moscow.
“In the Kursk region, we are holding stable,” he told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday. “The Russians have suffered great losses there. Their Koreans are running away. I think they will not be able to push us out of this territory soon. And it is like a magnet holding 60,000 troops out of Ukraine.”
Mixed picture
But there are also voices of caution about the operation.
Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, said the rationale for the incursion had been more political than military. The United States had previously warned Kyiv against taking aggressive actions toward Russia, which explains why the offensive was kept secret from Washington.
“It was sort of, ‘See, we can do this despite all the problems. If you support us more, the situation will change,’” he said. “Unfortunately, the victory plan did not succeed … well, things happen. If you do nothing you won’t make mistakes — and we didn’t have that luxury.”
“Now we are simply taking defensive action, inflicting maximum damage while the Russians and the [North Korean] troops try to regain control over the territories of the Russian Federation, because this is already a political priority for them,” the analyst added.
There are also worries that shifting elite Ukrainian troops from the fighting in the east of the country has allowed Russia to continue pressing along that front over recent months.
But Vitaly said it was worth it to invade Russia.
“We showed Russians and our partners, who have so quickly lost faith, we can still do anything on the battlefield, that we can still go on the offensive. We also showed the Russians that we’re not animals, like their propaganda has been trying to portray us, while they have started to lose faith that their government cares about them,” he said.
The Ukrainian military also argues that the incursion has helped draw Russian troops away from the front line in Ukraine. In the initial weeks of the invasion there was little sign that Russia was redeploying forces to Kursk, but recent months have produced evidence that is happening.
The operation also aimed to prevent a new enemy offensive in Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions, while the Ukrainian army continues to hold hundreds of square kilometers in the “buffer zone” in Russia, the General Staff added.
For Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the continued presence of hostile troops on Russian soil is a political embarassment.
However, while the Kursk incursion has cost thousands of Russian casualties, the Kremlin’s forces are continuing their grinding offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region that started in May.
