How Ukraine’s New Push in Kursk Can Change the War

OPINION — Ukrainian forces launched a fresh offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region over the weekend, trying to surprise Russian forces – and the North Korean troops fighting alongside them – and carve out more territory. Five months ago, Ukrainian troops entered Kursk in a stunning move that marked the first time a foreign military had occupied Russian territory since World War II. Since then, Russian and North Korean have been slowly retaking territory in Kursk seized by the Ukrainian side. In this sense, the current Ukrainian operation is really a counter-counteroffensive, aimed at turning the tide once more. And it’s clearly aimed at doing so before Donald Trump returns to the White House, and to gain some territorial leverage before Trump begins his much-promised effort to negotiate an end to the war.

“We continue to maintain a buffer zone on Russian territory, actively destroying Russian military potential there,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. “Since the beginning of the Kursk operation, the enemy has already lost over 38,000 troops in this area alone, including approximately 15,000 irrecoverable losses.”

The Cipher Brief spoke with former Senior CIA Officer Glenn Corn, a Cipher Brief expert, to discuss the state of the latest Ukrainian push in Kursk and the impact it may have on the wider war. “My own assessment is that the Ukrainians are trying to send a message again that they are in a position of strength,” Corn told us, noting the importance of the operation’s timing — just two weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

Corn spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity, and you can watch the full discussion on The Cipher Brief YouTube channel.

Nagorski: Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kursk – it’s a counter to a counteroffensive that the Russians had started. What can you tell us about what you’re hearing in terms of what’s going on?

Corn: My understanding is that the Ukrainians once again caught the Russians off guard. They launched, as you mentioned, a counter-counter-offensive. The Ukrainian estimate I saw is maybe eight kilometers (captured). It looks like they’re moving in the direction of the Kurchatov Atomic Station. There’s a lot of speculation as to whether that’s their objective, (or) that this is actually a deceiving maneuver, that they have plans to launch other offensives along the front. But it appears that they have been successful so far.

Kyiv is being very careful on what they’re saying in terms of details. And of course, in the Russian media space and the blogger space, the Russians are putting out lot of disinformation about the number of Ukrainians they’ve killed, equipment they’ve destroyed, aircraft they’ve shot down, which I find highly suspicious.

Nagorski: It’s five months ago now that they first stormed in there. It was one of the more startling military episodes of the war and widely understood then, at least in part, to be about leverage and grabbing a bargaining chip for any potential negotiations. Is that still the game, do you think?

Corn: My own assessment is that the Ukrainians are trying to send a message again that they are in a position of strength. I think the timing is important, because Putin didn’t have a very good end of last year. His number one ally in the Middle East got crushed and is now living in an AirBnb in Moscow somewhere, a guest of the Russian Federation, the terrorist Bashar al-Assad, former leader of Syria. The Syrian regime collapsed very quickly. This has caused a lot of complications for Putin and his reputation.

My own assessment is that [Russia is] not happy with the U.S. elections. They had hoped there’d be a lot more drama and turmoil in the U.S. after the elections. Instead, it was a pretty clear victory on the side of the Republicans and there were no major protests, no violence.

I speculate that the Ukrainians wanted to continue that bad streak for Putin and to show the incoming [U.S.] administration that they are strong, that they’re not on their back foot, and that they are an ally that we should count on and invest in because they can succeed.

Nagorski: It’s impressive what the Ukrainians done, on the one hand, but it’s also a small piece of Russian territory in Kursk. What kind of a bargaining chip is that?

Corn: I guess in theory, when they go to the bargaining table with the Russians, they can say, OK, we’ll give you back this territory that we took, if you give us some of the territory [Russia has captured]. Maybe a kilometer to kilometer – with the Russians, they’re very reciprocal, like an eye for an eye.

But I also would say that the Ukrainians have been involved in a very long-term effort, for over a year, to destabilize Russia from within, show the Russian people that Putin is not as strong as he is – coming after the collapse of the Assad regime, coming after news about the Russian economy, the devaluation of the ruble, and the fact that the Ukrainians stopped the gas transit, which is going to cause a problem for the Russian economy.

At the same time, people in the Trump administration have said that we are going to pump the Russians into submission, [regarding] oil and gas. In other words, economically, we are going to break the Russians’ back because that’s the main tool they’ve been using to finance their war. We’re going to devalue their energy resources by making available more of our own alternatives, which I personally think is a smart strategy.

All these things are happening, and I think the Ukrainians are just continuing to show that they can hit the Russians, they can catch Putin off guard, and that Putin is not protecting Russia the way that he claimed he was going to do when he came to power in early 2000s.

Nagorski: I want to mention the North Koreans. Talk a bit about the impact of their presence there.

Corn: The fact that [Russia] had to bring in North Koreans to fight this war, basically as mercenaries, demonstrates that they also have a personnel shortage in the Russian military. They have a problem. The North Koreans have not demonstrated great prowess on the battlefield. I’m not surprised about that. I doubt that they have the level of training and motivation that the Ukrainians have to defend their own territory. Remember, the Ukrainians are fighting a defensive war. The North Koreans, maybe they’re making more money doing this, and the propaganda and the level of brainwashing of the North Koreans is probably pretty high. But I doubt that they’re as motivated to fight. My understanding is that the Russians themselves are treating the North Koreans poorly, that there’s a lot of conflict between the North Korean troops and the Russians.

I don’t think that the North Koreans have made a huge difference so far. We’ll have to see now whether Putin tries to bring in another tranche, whether the North Koreans continue to invest in this, and whether the PRC continues to allow it to happen, because early on I think that Beijing was very upset with what Putin’s doing for a number of reasons.

Nagorski: Everyone has talked about the potential of a Trump-led plan or a negotiated effort [to end the war]. I think that the general assessment, in global media anyway, is that the Ukrainians would come to such a negotiation right now in a weak state. That doesn’t seem to be your take.

Corn: The Russians want people to believe that, and that’s been the Russian propaganda effort, the covert influence effort for a long time at multiple levels. I’m glad that President Trump actually stated publicly after Assad fled that Iran and Russia were not in positions of strength. It demonstrated their weakness. That is good because the incoming administration should understand that the Ukrainians are not as weak as the Russians want people to believe, and the Russians are not as strong and Putin’s not in the power position that he wants everyone to believe he’s in. Again, I think this operation may have been also intended to send a public message to people in Europe and the United States that we can still hit, we can still take territory, we can still catch the Russians, and look how incompetent the Russians are. We caught them again off guard.

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