Ukraine Needs Kursk
The Key to Unlocking Freedom
It was August 6th, 2024.
104 days had passed since the American Congress approved an aid package for Ukraine, after leaving the country to fend for itself in the wilderness for nearly six months. Avdiivka had fallen, its defenders forced to withdraw due to a crippling ammunition shortage. Patriot long-range air defense systems were nearly out of missiles, threatening to tip the balance of the war. Ukraine had also stumbled on its own, delaying the mobilization law that languished in the political process for over a year before finally reaching President Zelensky’s desk in mid-April.
Ukraine was just beginning to climb out of the trough. American weapons were starting to arrive, and recruitment was slowly gaining momentum. It would never be enough, but Ukraine was working with less than the bare minimum. The Biden administration had drawn a hard line: Russian territory was off-limits — not just for American weapons, but for any Western arms. Any attack on Russian soil risked not only catastrophic escalation in the eyes of Western leaders but also a collapse of trust between Ukraine and its most sophisticated ally.
If the ground invasion into Kursk went badly and Ukraine suffered a severe beating, it wouldn’t have been a simple setback — they would have risked losing a critical ally at the most crucial moment. Naturally, there was worry, even as they drafted the plan and began amassing the strength to achieve their objective. That worry became starkly visible when Ukrainian brigades crossed the Russian border and rolled into Kursk Oblast.
There were Leopard tanks. There was an abundance of German-made Marder infantry vehicles. There were even weapons from Eastern European nations. But there were no American-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. There was no ground support from American HIMARS launchers that could have easily decimated Russian positions and softened them before Ukrainian brigades faced them head-on.
Not a single HIMARS strike was reported in the first 100 hours.
Not one.
Being secretive was one thing, but the incursion into Kursk was, in many ways, breaking an unwritten agreement with President Biden. To avoid completely alienating him, Ukraine honored its promise not to use American weapons. Instead, they relied on European arms — equipment their leaders had repeatedly stated Ukraine was free to use as they saw fit.
It was a grey area, and Ukraine leveraged it skillfully to avoid provoking the Biden administration. Nevertheless, it was a significant risk, one they took because the potential benefits far outweighed the dangers.
The most critical benefit of the Kursk invasion was that it proved Ukraine could penetrate Russian territory and continue the war without crossing the nuclear threshold. Russia had already normalized these cross-border incursions by Ukraine. State Duma Deputy General Gurulyov even told Russians not to “get hung up on some state border.”
Putin withdrew troops from Kaliningrad to reinforce Kursk but refrained from deploying tactical nukes to compel Ukraine’s retreat. There was a time when Putin might have used nuclear weapons, but that moment passed when the ruble fell below 90 to the dollar. With the economy in dire straits, a single tactical nuke would not end the Ukrainian state — but it would almost certainly doom the Russian state.
It will be the end of Russia as we know it.
Since Kursk is Russian territory, any Ukrainian incursion there flips the existing battlefield logic. It’s the one area where Ukraine can play both offense and defense. Russians wants to evict Ukraine from Kursk. They cannot and will not establish continuous defensive lines to create a stable frontline, let alone expand it.
To winback Kursk, Russians must evict Ukraine entirely — a monumental challenge. Without fortified defensive positions, they leave gaps Ukraine can exploit. Ukrainian forces, with superior mobility on the field — bolstered by Russia’s critical shortages of tanks and armored personnel carriers — can seamlessly switch between attacking and defending. The only true limitation is Ukraine’s own combat power.
For every 1,000 troops Ukraine sends into Kursk, Russia, lacking both defenses and mobility, would need over 3,000 troops to even have a chance of dislodging them. Even then, success is far from guaranteed. This asymmetry creates a force ratio in Kursk that overwhelmingly favors Ukraine, more so than any other part of the battlefield.
The result? Russian casualty rates skyrocketed to staggering levels, directly linked to Ukrainian operations in Kursk.
Here’s the proof.
Finally, any Russian territory occupied by Ukraine offers Kyiv more leverage than anything else during ceasefire negotiations. Putin once declared that the West couldn’t expect him to surrender Russia’s hard-earned gains on the battlefield — a reference to Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces. Now, Ukraine can make the same claim about Russian territory under its control.
Ukraine should demand 100 square kilometers of its own land for every square kilometer of Russian territory it returns. This leverage should be adjusted based on Russia’s economic condition. If Ukraine negotiates now, the ratio could be 100:1. If Putin begins rationing food and regulating consumer prices for Russians, it should increase to 1,000:1. And if the ruble surpasses 134 to the dollar, the demand should rise to 2,000:1.
The real question for Western pundits isn’t why Ukraine has invaded Kursk, but why it isn’t expanding its footprint there further.
Thanks for reading. The war is getting closer to the end. Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to make critical information about Ukraine accessible. That’s why I’ve made 340 stories available to the public in 2024, including this one.
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