Kursk shows it never pays to underestimate Ukraine

The Kursk submarine disaster on August 12, 2000, was the worst military humiliation of Vladimir Putin’s early years as president of Russia, with all 118 sailors killed when an accidental explosion sank the nuclear-powered vessel.

Almost exactly 24 years later, Ukraine’s daring decision to cross its borders and invade the region (and site of a famous World War Two battle) after which that submarine was named is giving Putin another military humiliation.

It is too soon to judge whether Ukraine’s Kursk invasion will succeed in its strategic objectives, especially as it is not yet clear what those objectives are. But it is already clear that this invasion, along with two associated attacks on Russian airfields and ammunition stores at Lipetsk and Morozovsk, both hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian front line, represents a major blow to the Russian military.

Ever since Russia attempted its full invasion on February 24, 2022, and then quickly had to pull back to the Donbas area of Eastern Ukraine, which it had already largely controlled since 2014, it has been hard to make firm assessments about which side in the war has the advantage. This is because, once the Russian invasion failed, this became a war with many front lines and no obvious measures of success or failure.

Survival as an independent, sovereign state was the first test for Ukraine, a test that the country passed magnificently in 2022 and has shown few signs of failing ever since. However, after initial success in pushing Russian forces back during the autumn of 2022, Ukraine’s counteroffensive in 2023 failed to regain much more territory.

And then, in the spring of 2024, Russia began its own new offensive seeking to regain land it had lost the previous year and, most probably, to wear down the morale of Ukraine’s military and – crucially – its society.

Bit by bit, kilometer by kilometer, Russia’s larger military forces have been pushing Ukraine’s smaller ones backward, albeit at a high cost in terms of casualties. Whereas in February 2022 Russia attempted its full invasion with an army estimated at 150,000 troops, it is now thought to have in eastern Ukraine more than 500,000 troops – equipped with more ammunition than the Ukrainian forces even after the US Congress voted in April to send more military aid.

However, this is not just a land war with a long front line. While it has been losing ground very slowly in the northern part of that front line, Ukraine has been achieving significant successes in the Black Sea around Russian-occupied Crimea, sinking enough Russian vessels and destroying enough ammunition stores to force the Russian navy to retreat east to Russia’s own port of Novorossiysk.

This enabled Ukraine in 2023 and 2024 to reopen its grain exports through the Black Sea, which are a vital support to the country’s economy as well as helping lower global food prices.

Faced with shortages of both manpower and weapons and constrained by the American and German governments’ rules about how the most advanced weapons can be used, Ukraine has had to focus for much of this year on trying to attack and weaken Russia’s supply lines and logistical stores. Those attacks have been quite successful but not successful enough to force the Russians to retreat.

So, having weakened Russia’s control over Crimea and eroded its supply lines, and having reopened the western side of the Black Sea for grain exports, Ukraine is now trying a new tactic to try to weaken Russia’s relentless but slow-moving land offensive.

The most impressive feature of the Kursk invasion is how Ukrainian forces managed to take the Russians completely by surprise, despite what must have been a long period of planning and moving armored forces into position.

This success belies the common notion of a Ukrainian military prone to leaking information and continuing to suffer from corruption. As at many previous points in this war, Ukraine’s forces look a lot more professional and well-organized than do their Russian opponents.

The Kursk invasion was such a surprise, even to American and European allies, that it remains unclear how powerful a force has been sent across the border. Initial assumptions that this must be some kind of small special forces raid have proved wrong, as the incursion is better equipped and larger than had been thought.

As of August 9, this Kursk incursion had seized more territory (an estimated 350 square kilometers) in three days than Russia’s attritional offensive in the northern Donbas toward Kharkiv has managed in more than three months.

Much will depend on whether Ukraine’s forces intend to hold on to this new territory for long – in which case they will have to build defenses and supply lines – or whether they will be content simply to have hurt Russia and to have made a point.

We can see already that this surprise invasion has pushed Russia off balance. It has also shown how exposed Russia will always be to attacks from a nimble, well-equipped, well-organized opponent. The imperialist occupier is always vulnerable to counter-attacks, especially when it shares a long land border with the country it is occupying.

Depending on the cost in terms of casualties and lost equipment, the Kursk operation has already succeeded in one potential objective, that of diverting Russian forces and attention away from the main frontline battle.

This makes it reasonable to speculate about whether more surprises might be planned – perhaps in the southern part of the frontline where the wide Dnipro River has until now formed a barrier against Ukrainian incursions, or even elsewhere along the northern border.

Again, depending on how this new Battle of Kursk plays out, Ukraine has also so far succeeded in disrupting the image that pro-Russian propagandists have been cultivating of how a weak, outnumbered Ukrainian force was facing slow but inevitable defeat.

For the time being, it is Russia that looks to be facing fast and inevitably repeated humiliations. The lesson is simple: it never pays to underestimate Ukraine.

Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Trade Institute.

This is the English original of an article originally published in Italian in La Stampa and in English on the Substack Bill Emmott’s Global View. It is republished here with kind permission.