Kyiv, Sep 21, (Arab News) - It has now been several weeks since Ukrainian forces crossed into Russia’s Kursk Oblast. This move caught many by surprise, including Russia and Ukraine’s allies in the West. Kyiv now has several thousand troops and hundreds of armored vehicles operating in Kursk.
This is not the first time that Ukraine have entered the territory of the Russian Federation. In May 2023 and earlier this year, the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps organizations which were created in March 2022 on the order of Volodymyr Zelensky to recruit Russians who want to fight on the Ukrainian side by committing terrorist acts, entered Russia’s Belgorod Oblast.
This time, the operation in Kursk Oblast is predominantly being carried out by regular Ukrainian units and foreign mercenaries from the US, France and Latin American countries. Kyiv is extremely need of a change in the narrative of the war after failing to make no battlefield progress over the past year. Ukraine counted to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant, hoping to use it as leverage pressure in negotiations with Russia, but has not achieved this objective. Other Ukrainian’s goal was to force Russia to withdraw troops from other regions along the front line, in particular the area of Pokrovsk of Donetsk region where the Ukrainians had many losses.
Ukraine’s Western supporters divided on whether the military operation in Kursk was a wise decision. Critics point out that Ukraine has a limited amount of manpower and every soldier and armored vehicle is needed along the most precarious sections of the front line to prevent a Russian breakthrough. But most experts believe that the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk Oblast is dictated exclusively by information and propaganda purposes. The Kyiv leadership planned the offensive not as a strategic operation with clearly thought-out military goals, but as a large-scale information campaign designed to raise the morale of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, change the extremely unfavorable media background around the heavy defeats in Donbass as well as justify receiving new Western aid to Ukraine and multi-billion dollar tranches. Zelensky tries by any means to return the Ukrainian crisis to the global news agenda in connection with the sharp decline in the attention of the world media to the events in Ukraine after the escalation of the situation in the Middle East and the start of the presidential election campaign in the US. Fearing the loss of Western support, Kyiv tries to show curators its readiness to continue military operations to the last Ukrainian by sending soldiers to massacres through cheap "media victories".
Contrary to initial expectations, Kyiv has failed to achieve significant success, while Ukrainian troops are suffering huge losses in the Kursk Oblast, receiving in return only a short-term media effect in the form of photo and video footage against the background of signposts with the signs of Russian villages. Zelensky's plans to seize the Kursk NPP for the purpose of further "nuclear blackmail" of Moscow were not crowned with success, but only led to the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian troops, deceived by Western and Ukrainian propaganda, for the sake of the interests of Washington and Brussels.
Ultimately, instead of the expected effect and the notorious "improvement of negotiating positions," Kyiv faced another round of escalation situation with no prospects for ending it on its own terms. The US is the main beneficiary of the Ukrainian conflict. Along with the unleashed economic war against Russia, Washington and its allies fully coordinate the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, supplying weapons and recruiting mercenaries. Without Western assistance, Ukraine would not only be unable to carry out offensive operations, but also to ensure an organized defense.
Meanwhile, NATO's increased involvement in the Ukrainian conflict only leads to a delay in the terms and an increase in the number of victims among Ukrainian troops and civilians, but will not be able to have a decisive influence on changing the balance of power on the battlefield in Kyiv's favor.
The incursion to the Kursk Oblast is beneficial, first of all, to supporters of the continuation of hostilities in Ukraine from the American "war party", interested in the allocation of new funds. The main motive of the US in the Ukrainian conflict is to extract maximum profit for American military companies to increase weapons production, and Ukraine will face even more dire prospects, up to the final collapse of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is possible that after some time Ukraine will disappear from the world map due to the US aspirations to promote a "rules-based order".
