Follow us on social

Ukraine Sudzha

The hazards of Ukraine's incursion into Russia

While Kyiv has succeeded in capturing headlines, it's unclear at this point what the mission will actually achieve

Analysis | Europe

Should Americans regard Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region as a turning point in the war, one that could bring Kyiv important new leverage in bargaining over a settlement, if not outright victory? As tempting as it is to believe that the Ukrainian military can aspire to more than stalemate and compromise, there is little about the Kursk offensive that justifies such hopes.

True, Ukraine’s attack seemed to blindside the Kremlin, leading rapidly to the capture of some thirty villages and forcing the evacuation of roughly 200,000 Russian citizens. Ukrainian officials claim to control more than 400 square miles of Russian territory. This initial success has generated an impressive volume of optimistic takes on Western opinion pages and talk shows, while showing increasingly discouraged Ukrainians that their beleaguered forces remain capable of seizing the initiative on the battlefield.

To shift the course of the war, however, Ukraine’s gambit must either divert significant numbers of Russian forces from the fighting in Ukraine itself, seize or destroy strategically important assets inside Russia, or hold territory over the longer term that can become a bargaining chip in negotiations over ending the conflict. None of that appears likely.

So far, the Russian military has not moved large numbers of troops into Kursk from the primary fronts in the Donbass, Zaporizhia, and Kharkiv. Rather, it has relied on substantial numbers of combat reserves that it had held back from Ukraine, coupled with air strikes on Ukrainian armor, troop concentrations, fuel depots, and supply lines. This has effectively prevented Kyiv from diverting its already stretched manpower from the frontlines in Ukraine to reinforce its initial success in Kursk. To provide cover for the incursion, Ukraine moved air defense assets toward the border with Russia, but this exposed their positions to devastating Russian strikes. As a result, Ukraine’s rapid early advances have slowed substantially, raising profound doubts about its capacity to hold captured territory for long.

Had Ukraine managed to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant, one of the largest in Russia, its bargaining power over the Kremlin might have grown quite substantially. The Russian military would have been hard-pressed to dislodge forces holding the plant without damaging or destroying the facility, and Ukrainian occupiers could have wielded the threat of releasing radiation as leverage over Putin’s demands in any negotiations. But Ukrainian forces have fallen far short of reaching that objective and have little prospect of attaining it now that Russia has mobilized forces defending the plant.

If the Kursk incursion was meant to embarrass Putin and turn up the political pressure inside Russia for ending the war, that, too, seems unlikely. Past Russian battlefield setbacks, such as the forced withdrawals from Kyiv, Kherson, and Kharkiv, had little impact on Putin’s polling numbers. Putin arguably emerged strengthened from his suppression of the Wagner uprising in 2023, the most embarrassing development he has faced since launching the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian television coverage of the incursion suggests the Kremlin is confident it can repel and even exploit the incursion. It initially highlighted humanitarian efforts to support and relocate affected civilians, then in recent days focused on successful Russian counterattacks on Ukraine’s forces and supply lines. Televised images of British- and German-supplied tanks advancing into Kursk, where the Soviet Red Army fought the largest tank battle in history against Nazi invaders, could stoke patriotic feelings in Russia and reinforce Putin’s arguments that NATO is both orchestrating and enabling Ukrainian attacks.

Indeed, rather than creating pressures inside Russia to end the war, Ukraine’s Kursk gambit could bolster Russia’s hawks, who have long complained that Putin has been too reluctant to mobilize and employ Russia’s full military capabilities in Ukraine. The combination of their criticism and the vulnerabilities created by Ukraine’s diversion of its most effective troops into Kursk may finally persuade Putin to cast aside his slow attrition strategy in favor of pursuing a decisive breakthrough of Ukrainian defenses.

And if the White House is correct that Ukraine launched the attacks on Kursk without America’s blessing, the incident may reinforce those in Washington who argue that it is imprudent to provide long-range strike weapons to a Zelensky regime that is prone to recklessness.

More than 20 years ago, General David Petraeus issued a famous challenge following the start of the Iraq War: “Tell me how this ends.” The answer in Ukraine remains no clearer today than it has been throughout the two-and-a-half years of Russia’s invasion. The Kursk incursion has shown that Ukraine can still capture headlines, but securing large amounts of Russian-held territory and shifting the course of the war seems to be beyond its reach.


A Ukrainian serviceman patrols an area in the controlled by Ukrainian army town of Sudzha, Kursk region, Russia August 16, 2024. REUTERS/Yan Dobronosov

Analysis | Europe
Trump ASEAN
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., next to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim when posing for a family photo with leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26, 2025. Vincent Thian/Pool via REUTERS

‘America First’ meets ‘ASEAN Way’ in Kuala Lumpur

Asia-Pacific

The 2025 ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Kuala Lumpur beginning today are set to be consequential multilateral gatherings — defining not only ASEAN’s internal cohesion but also the shape of U.S.–China relations in the Indo-Pacific.

President Donald Trump’s participation will be the first by a U.S. president in an ASEAN-led summit since 2022. President Biden skipped the last two such summits in 2023 and 2024, sending then-Vice President Harris instead.

keep readingShow less
iran, china, russia
Top photo credit: Top image credit: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi shake hands as Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu looks on during their meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS

'Annulled'! Russia won't abide snapback sanctions on Iran

Middle East

“A raider attack on the U.N. Security Council.” This was the explosive accusation leveled by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov this week. His target was the U.N. Secretariat and Western powers, whom he blamed for what Russia sees as an illegitimate attempt to restore the nuclear-related international sanctions on Iran.

Beyond the fiery rhetoric, Ryabkov’s statement contained a message: Russia, he said, now considers all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran, snapped back by the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — “annulled.” Moscow will deepen its military-technical cooperation with Tehran accordingly, according to Ryabkov.

This is more than a diplomatic spat; it is the formal announcement of a split in international legal reality. The world’s major powers are now operating under two irreconcilable interpretations of international law. On one side, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany assert that the sanctions snapback mechanism of the JCPOA was legitimately triggered for Iran’s alleged violations. On the other, Iran, Russia, and China reject this as an illegitimate procedural act.

This schism was not inevitable, and its origin reveals a profound incongruence. The Western powers that most frequently appeal to the sanctity of the "rules-based international order" and international law have, in this instance, taken an action whose effects fundamentally undermine it. By pushing through a legal maneuver that a significant part of the Security Council considers illegitimate, they have ushered the world into a new and more dangerous state. The predictable, if imperfect, framework of universally recognized Security Council decisions is being replaced by a system where legal facts are determined by political interests espoused by competing power blocs.

This rupture followed a deliberate Western choice to reject compromises in a stand-off with Iran. While Iran was in a technical violation of the provisions of the JCPOA — by, notably, amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (up to 60% as opposed to the 3.67% for a civilian use permissible under the JCPOA), there was a chance to avert the crisis. In the critical weeks leading to the snapback, Iran had signaled concessions in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo, in terms of renewing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s inspectors.

keep readingShow less
On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants
Top Photo Credit: (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants

Europe

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there "for however long it takes" has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.