The Kursk Gamble

It seems like a waste of limited resources at a time when Ukraine can’t afford to spare anything.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the obvious downside of Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russian territory:

Ukraine’s Kursk operation has embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin and given Kyiv the tactical initiative in one area for the first time in nearly a year. But it transferred troops and weapons from its already-creaking front lines to pull it off, a gamble that risks making a bad situation worse.

The costs of the gamble are clear, but it is harder to see what the Ukrainian government hopes to achieve beyond giving Russia a taste if its own medicine. It is possible that seizing some Russian territory could give Ukraine a bargaining chip to use in future negotiations to get back some of their own land, but beyond that it seems like a waste of limited resources at a time when they can’t afford to spare anything. If the Kursk incursion weakens their other lines of defense to the point where Russia makes significant gains elsewhere, it will have undermined Ukraine’s overall position in exchange for a fleeting moment of success. That seems like a poor tradeoff for the sake of causing Putin some temporary embarrassment.