Russian troops are inching ever close to
Ukraine’s eastern city of Pokrovsk, a vital logistical hub for Kyiv’s
outgunned and outnumbered forces, leading some analysts to question the
wisdom of a Ukrainian lightning offensive on Russian soil that was
intended to distract Moscow from its Donbas push.
The Ukrainian army
remains in control of more than 1,000 square kilometres of land in
Russia’s Kursk region, almost a month into a brazen cross-border incursion that offered Kyiv’s forces a much-needed morale boost – and dealt Russian President Vladimir Putin a humiliating blow.
Along
eastern Ukraine’s sprawling front line, however, the Russian army has
been notching up territorial gains, cutting deeper towards the city of
Pokrovsk in Donetsk
province, a crucial supply and reinforcement hub for Ukraine’s
frontline troops, and claiming the capture of a nearby village on
Wednesday.
Moscow’s troops have moved to within 10 kilometres of
the strategic city, the UK’s military intelligence reported on Monday as
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky conceded that the situation on the ground was “difficult”.
“Russian
goals have not changed,” Zelensky told reporters, noting that the
assault on Pokrovsk began long before Ukraine’s Kursk offensive. To
some, his words amounted to an admission that Kyiv had failed to alter
Moscow’s goals.
Read moreIncursion into Russia’s Kursk region: A risky gamble for Ukraine?
In the immediate aftermath of Ukraine’s brazen cross-border offensive, military experts quizzed by FRANCE 24 agreed that the operation’s primary aim appeared to be the redeployment of Russian troops engaged in the Donbas.
In
that respect, Ukraine’s “provocation” has failed, Putin told Russian
media on Monday, boasting that Moscow’s forces were advancing in the
Donbas at the fastest pace “in a long time”.
![A map showing the Russian advance on Pokrovsk and Ukraine's offensive in Kursk region.]()
A map showing the Russian advance on Pokrovsk and Ukraine's offensive in Kursk region. © Studio graphique FMM
While the Kursk offensive did force Russia to redeploy
troops from parts of the front line, analysts caution, those movements
did not affect the battle for Pokrovsk.
In fact, “Russian
operations are now solely concentrated in the Pokrovsk region,” said
Gustav Gressel, a Ukraine war analyst at the European Council on Foreign
Relations, adding that Moscow’s forces were “kind of freezing other
fronts”.
Before the Kursk offensive, “the Russians were
advancing on seven fronts in the Donbas", added Huseyn Aliyev, a Ukraine
war expert at the University of Glasgow. “And now it’s only Pokrovsk,
while some troops elsewhere are being redeployed to Kursk.”
‘Strategically misguided’
Such
manoeuvres suggest there has indeed been a “Kursk effect” in the
Donbas. The trouble for Kyiv is that the effect is not being felt where
it matters most.
Indeed, a Russian breakthrough in Pokrovsk
“could force a broader Ukrainian retreat in the Donetsk region", warned
Will Kingston-Cox, a Russia expert at the International Team for the
Study of Security (ITSS) Verona, such is the town’s strategic
importance.
A transport hub with a pre-war population of 50,000, many of whom have now fled,
Pokrovsk is “an important supply hub, with several roads and rail lines
converging there", said Veronika Poniscjakova, an international
security expert at the University of Portsmouth who is closely
monitoring the war in Ukraine.
If the city falls, “the Russians
will have an open road to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk", added Aliyev, for
whom Ukraine had virtually no chance of stopping Moscow’s advance in
Pokrovsk region.
In fact, the invading army may not even need to occupy Pokrovsk to
wreak havoc on Ukraine’s supply chain and deal a severe blow to its
forces, argued Gressel.
“They don’t have to conquer the city
physically to make logistics complicated for Ukraine,” he said. “As long
as they go close enough to the city.”
Gressel noted that
Ukraine’s lightning attack in Kursk region had drawn Kyiv’s “most mobile
reserves” away from the Donbas, where they may have been better suited
to defensive operations requiring an ability to rapidly fall back and
regroup.
In that respect, “the Kursk incursion appears to have
been strategically misguided”, said Kingston-Cox, describing the
operation as a “symbolic victory” that has proved to be “overoptimistic”
in terms of its desired impact on the Donbas.
Others
have cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to stem the Russian advance on
Pokrovsk even if it hadn’t committed some of its best troops to the
Kursk advance.
“I don’t think those units would have been capable
of altering the balance of forces in the Donbas,” said military analyst
Sim Tack, who has monitored the conflict since the start of Russia’s
full-scale invasion.
Ukraine’s army leadership may have reasoned
that “its troops had a better chance of securing victory in Kursk region
than halting the Russian advance in Donbas", added Aliyev.
Assessing
the success or failure of Ukraine’s surprise offensive should not be
based solely on its repercussions on the eastern front, argued Tack, for
whom the control of Russian territory gives Kyiv a “bargaining chip”
for future negotiations.
Zelensky stated during an interview with NBC on Tuesday that
Ukrainian forces were “conceptually” planning to hold territory in Kursk
for an unspecified period of time, reiterating that the incursion was
part of Ukraine’s “victory plan” to end the war on just terms and bring
Russia to the negotiating table.
Whether that bargaining chip has any real value remains in
doubt, cautioned Poniscjakova, noting that Putin has made clear his
priority is completing the annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk province,
which Moscow claims as its own.
Putin has notably played down the
significance of Ukraine’s incursion, the first on Russian soil since
World War II, appearing in no rush to chase out the intruders while his
forces press on with their assaults in eastern Ukraine.
His
stance sends a message both to his domestic audience and to Kyiv,
minimising the Russian army’s setbacks at home and stressing that Moscow
will not give up on its plans for territorial conquest in Ukraine.
“By
focusing on Donbas, Russia is making clear that it is not willing to
make a lot of concessions in exchange for Kursk,” said Kingston-Cox.
“That’s because Donetsk region is the main objective.”
This article has been translated from the original in French.
![Read more analysis on the war in Ukraine]()
Read more analysis on the war in Ukraine © France Médias Monde graphic studio