President Zelensky should have pressed ahead with peace talks in August 2024, rather than invading Kursk. Ahead of talks between Presidents Trump and Putin this week, he has no cards left to play.
According to the New York Times on Sunday, Ukrainian troops are all but gone from the Russian Kursk region. At the peak of last August's offensive, Ukraine held 500 square miles of the Russian territory. After fierce fighting it holds just a sliver of that today.
It is perhaps ironic that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s audacious offensive took place in the midst of secret talks in Qatar towards a partial ceasefire. It is no coincidence that Russia’s offensive in Kursk over the past week took place while Ukraine was agreeing with the U.S. on the notion of a possible ceasefire during talks in Saudi Arabia.
The inauguration of President Trump in January made U.S.-led pressure to end the fighting both inevitable but also, more importantly, predictable. It is absolutely clear to me that for President Putin, retaking Kursk was essential to putting him in the best possible place to negotiate.
Zelensky had gambled on improving his hand of cards in future ceasefire talks by being able to trade land in Russia for the return of land in Ukraine. That gamble has failed. Prior to the past week, based on the Institute for the Study of War battle map, Russia had already occupied three-to-four times more land in Ukraine than was seized in Kursk.
Over the past 11 years, I have witnessed Russia’s preference for upping the military ante to put themselves in the strongest possible position before striking a deal. What has happened over the past week has been, in many respects, a carbon copy of the tactics Russia used immediately before the agreement of the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 peace deals.
After the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk seized power following the February 2014 ouster of President Yanukovych, the Ukrainian army launched an Anti-Terror Operation to regain control of the Donbas. This led to considerable success on the Ukrainian side and the recapture of several large towns. With Ukrainian forces reaching the outskirts of Luhansk and Donetsk cities, the Russian military stepped into the conflict. On August 29, 2014, Russian formations encircled the town of Ilovaisk, inflicting a bloody defeat on the Ukrainian formations who are thought to have lost up to four hundred personnel. Just days later, the First Minsk agreement was signed, offering concessions to the separatists in the form of progress towards devolution.
The Ukrainian side didn’t push forward with devolution or a promised ‘national dialogue’. While the line of contact largely held, there were repeated violations of the ceasefire and casualties on both sides, including civilian casualties in the separatist areas which were verified by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. In late January 2015, Russian backed Wagner troops mounted a brutal and, ultimately, successful encirclement of the town of Debaltseve, causing a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops.
This battle of Debaltseve precipitated the negotiations in Minsk on February 11-12 to agree to the second Minsk agreement, with Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at the talks. Minsk II strengthened the requirements on the Ukrainian side to push forward with devolution in the Donbas. Russia finally called a halt to the fighting on 18 February, as the UN Security Council endorsed the Minsk II deal.
The reported Russian encirclement in Kursk over the past week is audacious. According to reports, several hundred Russian troops crawled around nine miles through an unused gas pipeline to emerge behind Ukrainian formations. This caused panic and confusion among the Ukrainian formations who retreated, as larger Russian formations drove into the area from the west and east, threatening a complete encirclement.
The Ukrainians dispute this record of events, and have been backed up by the Institute for the Study of War, which told Western media on Friday that it has “observed no geolocated evidence to indicate that Russian forces have encircled a significant number of Ukrainian forces” in Kursk or anywhere else along the frontline in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, if reports are true, it offers further proof of Russia’s penchant for encirclement, going back to World War II, and the encirclement of the German army outside of Stalingrad. All across the Ukrainian front line during 2024, Russian forces have mounted a series of small tactical encirclements to capture villages and towns. Pro-Russian military bloggers were gleeful that the Kursk encirclement was made possible by gas pipes that were empty because of Ukraine’s decision to halt Russian gas transit to Europe as of January 1.
Let’s be clear, Ukraine had been fighting hard to keep hold of the Kursk bridgehead as part of Zelensky’s land-trade gamble. This year saw a major Ukrainian counter-attack, following a build-up of military material from western donor nations. At best, this Ukrainian operation ended in a draw, with some Russian gains in the west of Kursk and some marginal Ukrainian gains north of Sudzha.
Even if Ukraine had held onto its remaining bridgehead in Russia, it would have gone into any US-brokered peace talks in a weaker position than it was in August. In characteristic fashion, President Zelensky has this week been being throwing out chaff about President Putin avoiding the possibility of a peace deal. But, right now, and to echo President Trump’s words during their fated Oval Office meeting, he has the weakest hand of cards.
U.S. Special Representative Steve Witkoff has announced that Presidents Trump and Putin may speak in the coming week. I assess that President Putin will go into that conversation ready to settle if he receives the assurances that he seeks.
The question for Washington is what incentive they can offer to Putin to line up behind a ceasefire? UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European leaders have been advancing, frankly unworkable, ideas about tightening sanctions on Russia to force a settlement. But Putin will not agree to stand down his troops and face yet more sanctions having gained the upper hand. Anyone who believes that he will is, I am sorry to say, quite deluded.
The biggest hint of what might persuade Putin was provided by the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte this week in an interview with Bloomberg. In possibly the most consequential ‘mm-hmm’ of this century, he offered the strongest signal that Ukrainian membership of the military alliance may now have been taken off the table. This is Russia’s top ask of any peace process. If President Trump makes that offer explicit and unequivocal, then I judge that President Putin would embrace a ceasefire and peace talks.
