VAZHA TAVBERIDZE: What are Ukraine’s strategical aims erstwhile it comes to the Kursk and Belgorod incursions? What does it want to achieve?
PHILIP INGRAM: I’m evidently making a fewer assumptions in analysing it, but I’m doing so from individual who has planned these sorts of operations on many occasions. Ukraine had real difficulty in achieving any success in the east. They were almost forced into a counteroffensive last year, before they had the capability to do anything that would push the Russians back, due to the fact that the Russian defences are stronger than any defensive lines that we’ve seen in any conflict ever, even defensive lines in the Second planet War.
So, alternatively of continuing to fight against a brick wall that is not moving, or, in fact, a brick wall that is advancing slow further into Ukraine, Kyiv decided the only way to wrestle the initiative back was to attack into Kursk. I think they’ve been planning this for any time, due to the fact that we saw a couple of incursions into the Belgorod region by the Russian Legion last year. The Ukrainians attacked into Kursk for a number of reasons. The first and foremost is to capture Russian territory, due to the fact that what that did was 2 things. One, it embarrassed Vladimir Putin significantly, made him seem weak to his interior ellipse and made him seem weaker than he’s been saying he is to his global supporters, peculiarly Xi Jinping in China, Kim Jong Un in North Korea and the Ayatollah in Iran. And two, it brought the reality of what is going on in Ukraine to the Russians, and it is indeed something that Vladimir Putin has put an tremendous effort into keeping distant from the Russian people, through controlling the information domain and what they’re saying. Now that there are Ukrainian troops on Russian dirt and there are 200,000 estimated displaced individuals going into another Russian cities, the information can’t be kept out of the discussions that are going on amongst the population. So that further weakened Putin’s position.
The next strategical aim was to say to the West: “See? We have crossed 1 of Vladimir Putin’s strongest red lines and he does nothing. And therefore, if we’ve crossed 1 of his strongest red lines by physically invading Russia, which he has said in the past, or at least severely hinted at, would lead to a atomic option, then he’s not going to do anything. So, global community, delight give us the greenlight to usage the weapons that you’ve given us against military targets further inside Russia, due to the fact that if he’s not going to respond to this red line, he’s not going to respond to any of the others.” And that negotiation is inactive ongoing.
The next goal was to capture and hold any territory that could be utilized for barter should the conditions be set for negotiations at any phase in the future. If you look at the size of territory that’s presently controlled, and the possible with the attack into Belgorod, Ukraine could capture a crucial part of Russian territory. It won’t be rather the same, but you’re getting close to the square kilometer-ish area that the Russians have seized in Ukraine in the east. And that would give Ukraine a very strong negotiating position. It continues to weaken Putin and the longer the Ukrainians stay in there, the weaker he will be. The final objective, and we heard this from [Ukraine’s chief commander] General [Oleksandr] Syrskiy, is to effort and get the Russians to decision any of their troops distant from both the reserve forces and any of those that are engaged, to gotta deal with the Ukrainian incursions, thereby weakening their attacks in the east and their ability to take territory. I think the Ukrainians have achieved everything apart from that last objective. There are no indications to propose that the Russians are moving crucial numbers of troops around. At the moment, there are indications to propose that any are being moved around, but not adequate to weaken the Russian attacks in the east.
As a erstwhile military intelligence officer, how would you rate these 2 incursions, planning-wise? Do you think this happened with a greenlight or without?
I was a military intelligence officer for most of my career. I spent quite a few my time in planning and I think the Ukrainians have shown that they are masterful planners. I tip my hat to them. They keep amazing me with their ingenuity, with the level of item that they go into, with their operational security. And that’s why we don’t know much about what’s going on in Belgorod at the moment. And with that operational security, I don’t think they formally briefed anyone in the West. I suspect, informally, they have 1 or 2 trusted individuals that they would have talked to about certain elements, but not necessarily given the full plan away.
Operational safety is critical in all of this. You only get 1 chance and surprise, and the Ukrainians have executed that perfectly. It is simply a bold move, but a very intriguing and well-calculated 1 too. I think erstwhile planners in the West saw it, they will have had this wry grin on their face going, “ah, yes, you’ve caught us out again. Brilliant. Well done, Ukraine!”
Where do we go from here? president Volodymy Zelenskyy has said this is all a part of a bigger plan. Can I ask you to speculate what that grand plan might be?
We’ve seen reporting that president Zelenskyy is going to present his triumph plan to president Joe Biden in the United States within the next month. Therefore, I think that’s the plan. I think the plan was to wrestle the initiative back again, which they have done, to embarrass Putin domestically and internationally, and to show that yet another red line has been crossed. I think Zelenskyy will give a very detailed and impassioned plan to Biden and ask him to take the gloves off and let the Ukrainians push for victory.
Biden is being very careful, not due to the fact that he doesn’t want Ukraine to push for victory, but due to the fact that there are people whispering to him that there could be much larger implications, that there’s no answer that will come out of this conflict that is going to be superb for planet stableness if it’s not very carefully handled.
There will be a deadline attached to this plan, considering that there is simply a time limit attached to president Biden’s tenure, right?
Yes, there is. There are always political time windows. And I think that this is what Zelenskyy will be looking at. He knows Biden. He’s been working with Biden and knows what his limits are and how to influence him. He doesn’t know Kamala Harris, and he has a perception of Donald Trump that may be right or may be wrong. But what he doesn’t want to do is to gotta go back and start all over again, building relationships up. So that gives a degree of force to get things done in a circumstantial time window.
And we’ve got the winter coming. The weather will restrict movement for dense armour. It will change the tactics that should be used. It will let the Russians any time to recover any of their capability. The Ukrainians, if they hold the initiative, will usage the winter to prepare for a bigger counteroffensive coming sometime next year, whenever they can get the appropriate air cover, now that they’re starting to get the elusive F-16s and are flying them.
How long can Ukraine sustain the Kursk and Belgorod operations? And, conversely, how long can Russia tolerate it until something gives way domestically?
The Ukrainians seem to be in it for the long term, due to the fact that they’re bringing more of their civilian personnel in to deal with local safety and another local issues. And they’ll besides calculate how long they can sustain it, due to the fact that logistics will dictate the timelines for everything. I think the Ukrainians have no problems with continuing to resupply what they request in Kursk, and possibly Belgorod, for as long as it takes. They can dig in for the long term.
Even as Russia advances in the east, slow though that advance might be?
Russian activity in the east and across the front line will always dictate whether the situation stays the same. In British military planning terms, we have an infamous question which is “Question Four,” which you ask all time you run the planning cycle. Question 4 is: “has the situation changed?” If the situation has changed, you don’t proceed with the same plan; you bring out either a fresh plan – a sequel of the old 1 – or you do something different. If the situation’s changed and you’re moving with the same plan, then you’re going to fail. The Ukrainians have been trained in that level of planning from the West. They besides have the experience of the Russian staff approaches to planning. So they can bring the 2 together and work that very well indeed. And they will have calculated that. If things change importantly for the worse in the east, and this is what I think Putin is trying to do, then the Ukrainians might retreat from Kursk and go around to reenforce that. Or they might do something different. I fishy they’ll do something different, something little foreseeable.
From a Russian sustainability perspective, I would say Putin is caught like a rabbit in the headlights. He doesn’t know where to turn. There hasn’t been a decisive decision from him in any way, form or form with respect to this. He’s trying to bluff it out at the moment, even to himself – he thinks it’s like a small thorn in the side. He’s not recognizing the real difficulties that could come from it. And this is where I think the Ukrainians will have planned their next actions.
Let’s besides talk about the possible western response. Will Ukraine’s actions prompt the West to supply more help, or, on the contrary, will it shackle the West with fears of escalation?
I think that the hazard of escalation is something that is holding president Biden and Chancellor [Olof] Scholz of Germany back. In Europe, the United Kingdom and France want to take the shackles off. I do not think it is going to shackle decision-making any more than it shackles them at the moment.
With that in mind, do you think we will see a greenlight for the usage of long scope missiles on Russian soil? And will we see more F-16s delivered?
They will come erstwhile they’re needed. There are very interesting comments that have come from Zelenskyy in the last fewer weeks and days. The first was erstwhile they moved into Kursk, he turned around and said that this was Ukraine creating a buffer zone. He utilized precisely the same language that Putin had utilized to propose his attack into Kharkiv and the attack in the east were dictated by the request to make a buffer zone. And that was, I think, a rude hand motion from Zelenskyy to Putin. But, more interesting from the long-range attack perspective, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had successfully tested its own ballistic missile. It has a scope of at least 700 kilometres and so can hit Moscow. That’s a good alternate to have, due to the fact that if and erstwhile the West gives Ukraine the authorization to usage western long scope missiles on Russian soil, it will put forward very strong caveats, for example, that western weapons are only to be utilized against military targets and not against economical targets: so, no targeting factories, oil refineries, cities and another populous areas. But yes, you can mark airfields and military office and military logistic depots and everything else. I think that’s weeks, if not days, away.
Philip Ingram is simply a retired Colonel and erstwhile elder Military Intelligence officer from the British army. He is now a writer specialising in cyber, security, counter terror, defence and intelligence.
Vazha Tavberidze is simply a Georgian writer and staff author with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service. His writing has been published in various Georgian and global media outlets, including The Times, the Spectator, the Daily Beast and New east Europe.
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