Ukraine’s operation in Russia’s Kursk Region has shifted the narrative of the war, according to British researchers from the Royal United Services Institute.
“The Ukrainian intervention into Kursk has several aims,” says Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Kyiv’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, including relieving the pressure on the front elsewhere and offering a physical buffer zone for hard-pressed Ukrainian army units around the eastern town of Sumy. The Kursk advance offers space for diplomatic brinkmanship to seize the moment,” he argues.
Against the backdrop of the Kursk operation, excluding the possibility of Putin’s departure and Russia’s economic collapse, four peaceful scenarios can be imagined. “The first would be Ukraine’s ejection of Russia, through military means or negotiations. This requires the on-time delivery of weapons promised by the West and required by Kyiv, and, for its part, Ukraine to turn out more trained and refreshed brigades.”
The second would be for Kyiv to negotiate from a position of weakness. “A third would be to meet Putin’s demands, and not strive for Ukrainian security guarantees through NATO (or EU) membership. But this presumes that Putin abandons what former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, who survived dioxin poisoning by Russian agents, describes to us as an ‘imperial project to recreate the Russian empire, an ambition of Putin’s which is impossible without including Ukraine’,” as experts have warned.
“The fourth, wild-card, possibility is that an outsider – Donald Trump (should he win the US election) or even President Xi perhaps – threatens Russia and Ukraine respectively with an escalation and a reduction of support to Kyiv in order to cut a deal,” the text reads.
While this is risky from a military standpoint, the operation in Kursk has successfully shifted the narrative of the war. “Now is not the time to micro-manage the risk in Ukraine’s actions, hold back supplies or maintain strict caveats on the use of equipment, especially against military targets in Russian territory, out of fear that Putin might escalate, perhaps with a nuclear option. Over the past few years, Ukrainians have learned that the externally imposed stipulations of keeping the war inside the boundaries of Ukraine have only enabled Russia, and tragically left Ukraine in a lethal war of attrition,” the text continues.
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Cover: Anatoliy Zhdanov/Kommersant Publishing House via AP
