The political implications of Ukraine’s military incursion into the Kursk region of Russia are becoming increasingly clear: it is bad for Vladimir Putin and Russian society and good for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his soldiers, and Ukrainians.
There is no way Putin and his apologists in the West can continue to spin events in Kursk as a Ukrainian mistake. In early August, Russian pundits in Moscow and Ukrainian skeptics in Europe and the United States immediately denounced the military move as reckless and desperate; the mighty Russian army would slaughter the Ukrainian invaders with ease, or so the argument went. More than a month later, that has not happened— quite the opposite. Putin’s ability to mobilize forces to launch, let alone win, a counteroffensive has proven so far to be limited. In the meantime, the Ukrainian armed forces have advanced deeper into the Kursk region.
Putin cannot continue to dismiss the significance of this incursion. This is the first time that the Soviet Union or Russia has been invaded since Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941. The sacred duty of all commanders-in-chief is to defend their homeland. After all, this was one of Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine in 2022: to “defend the homeland” from “hostile Western forces.” Moreover, the significance of defeating the Nazis in World War II (also known as the Great Patriotic War) strongly lingers in the collective memories of many post-Soviet societies, but especially so in Russian society. Victory over Nazi Germany is a source of national pride and glory for many older Russians. Thus, to be invaded again is an embarrassment, a disgrace, and a sign of weakness.
Moreover, Kursk is not just an isolated sign of Putin’s military weakness. In June 2023, in an unexpected move, Yevgeny Prigozhin, then head of the private paramilitary known as the Wagner Group (now Africa Corps), and his troops orchestrated an armed mutiny, demanding the resignation of Russia’s top defense officials. They quickly and without a fight seized Rostov—an important logistical headquarters for Russia’s Ministry of Defense in its war with Ukraine—and started marching toward Moscow, once again facing weak resistance. Putin did not stop the mutiny through military force; instead, he negotiated an end to the uprising with the assistance of Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko. That too was not a strong look. Months later, Putin killed Prigozhin in a plane crash and defused the coup plotters. This episode, however, exposed the weakness of the Russian security forces inside the country, exactly as is happening again in Kursk.
In addition, Putin both failed to evacuate the Russian people from Kursk and failed to keep the scope of the invasion secret. In a televised August 12 meeting of security officials, Putin cut off Kursk’s acting governor, Andrei Smirnov, when Smirnov openly disclosed that twenty-eight villages had been captured and at least two thousand Russians were missing in Ukraine-occupied territories. Moreover, though we should be skeptical of our ability to gauge Russian public opinion, a recent Kremlin-commissioned poll showed that “against the backdrop of the incursion, the share of Russians who believe an ‘anxious mood’ is predominant in their social circles shot up 6 points to 45 percent” (Source: Meduza). As one of the officials close to the Kremlin told Meduza, the Putin administration considered this figure quite high and hoped it would come down quickly. To aid such efforts, the Kremlin has employed propagandists to convince Russians that such realities are simply a “new normal.”
In Ukraine, the Kursk incursion has produced tangible benefits. First, Zelenskyy succeeded in reversing the growing global narrative that Ukraine was losing the war. Second, Zelenskyy undermined the Western voices calling on the Ukrainian leader to swap land for peace. The discussion has changed, at least for now. Zelenskyy’s negotiation position is certainly stronger today than it was before the Kursk incursion. Third, the psychological boost for Ukrainians is palpable in the reporting I read and in my daily conversations with Ukrainians.
Kursk has not yet compelled Putin to pull soldiers out of the Donbas region of Ukraine to fight inside Russia, as was hoped for, but the Kursk offensive has lifted the spirits of Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Donbas.
The final chapter of the battle for Kursk has yet to be written, but the short-term benefits for Ukraine and the short-term losses for Russia are already apparent.
