On 6th August, Ukraine launched an offensive into the Russian oblast of Kursk, capturing approximately 1000 square kilometres of enemy territory after one week. In achieving this strategic surprise, Ukraine was able to seize more Russian territory than Russia had been able to take from Ukraine up until that point in the calendar year. Ukrainian leaders kept its partners in the dark, apparently in part because it would have been derided as ‘unrealistic.’
Nearly two months since the beginning of the Kursk offensive, the assessment among many observers and analysts of the war has been mixed. On the one hand, it has exposed the inability of Russia to defend its own border, creating a personal embarrassment for Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. Considering that Ukraine has been on the back foot for much of 2024, the Kursk Offensive demonstrated that it still has plenty of fight left, reminding many that the trajectory of the war can involve many twists and turns. Even Russia’s recent counterattacks may have succeeded in liberating some settlements, but they have so far not expelled Ukrainian forces.
On the other hand, the offensive has required the commitment of valuable equipment and personnel which could have been used to defend those areas – particularly Pokrovsk, a key logistics junction in Donetsk – which was already under increasing strain from Russian ground assaults. If the Kursk Offensive had the intention of diverting Russian resources away from Pokrovsk, then Ukraine has failed. Russia has thrown even more forces in that direction than before, steadily taking more of the city and its surrounding area. The Kremlin did not take the bait.
Yet there is another difficult truth which Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive revealed. The reaction among Ukraine’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) partners has at best been mixed, even ambivalent. It was not of the sort which showed, in no uncertain terms, a sincere desire to see Ukraine victorious.
There was little, if any, effort to capitalise on the momentum which the Kursk Offensive generated. It took several weeks for NATO partners to announce new packages of military assistance and those which were made have a modest character, whether to shore up Ukraine’s air defence requirements or to provide much-needed munitions. Dashing expectations, Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, and Joe Biden, President of the United States (US), did not announce that Ukraine could use long-range strike weapons against military targets on Russian territory when they met at the White House in September. Such a policy shift would have been significant and long overdue considering all the punishment that Ukraine has taken over the course of the last two years. That policy shift remains uncertain, if not elusive.
Of course, midsummer bureaucratic inertia may provide part of the explanation, yet that would be generous. There has been a persistent gap between announced aid and delivered aid since Russia launched its full-scale of Ukraine on 24th February 2022. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, has asserted that Canada will stand with Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’, a sentiment echoed by Sir Keir. Yet ammunition production in Canada has seen only modest growth, with most of the major investment planned for after 2025 – that is, when the ruling political party will likely no longer be in power. Though a leader in Europe in terms of military hardware provided, Germany has been emphatic in its refusal to equip Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles. Most problematically, the reaction of Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, to the Kursk Offensive seems to centre on the need to resume peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. When Emmanuel Macron, President of France, daringly suggested back in February the deployment of NATO soldiers on Ukrainian territory to provide some logistical relief, almost all allies – including some of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine – demurred.
Escalation management may yet be another explanation, especially since risk-aversion has been characteristic of Ukraine’s partners’ response to Russia’s full-scale invasion. Indeed, some observers have argued that such aversion is not only rational but also desirable in view of Russia’s arsenal of nuclear weapons and the danger of potential military escalation to engulf more of Europe.
Yet, this account is incomplete. After all, NATO – and for matter Ukrainian – decision-makers have already crossed many of the red lines which Moscow has asserted, whether by providing certain types of military equipment, attacking Russian critical infrastructure, or taking Russian territory in the Kursk oblast. What requires additional explanation is why risk-aversion remains as deep-seated as it is among certain key individuals, as is apparently the case with Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor, and their apparent unwillingness to adjust.
For Ukraine, the implications are clear enough. It cannot be sure that its NATO partners really want Ukraine to defeat Russia. It cannot depend on others for the protection of its political sovereignty and territorial integrity, even if it rightly seeks the holy grail of NATO membership and desperately needs the military, financial, and humanitarian assistance to persevere in the face of incorrigible Russian aggression. Its own manufacture of weapons capable of deep strike is indicative that Ukrainian leaders have already internalised this lesson.
The irony is that in trying to restrain Ukraine and to manage escalation risks accordingly, Ukraine’s partners have unwittingly encouraged Kyiv to become more self-reliant so that, in the future, there may be fewer opportunities for restraint. Cynically, these partner governments might accept those risks since Ukrainian society is dying: the birth rate has collapsed, emigration has skyrocketed, and population mortality has deteriorated. One can be forgiven for thinking that those governments accept the risk of near-certain humanitarian catastrophe to whatever haunts their imaginations.
Alexander Lanoszka is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs. His most recent book is Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century, published by Polity in 2022. To learn more about his analytical work, visit his website.
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