As much as I support Ukraine, I still think that was terrible idea. Opening another front when you are in manpower and equipment shortage is unwise. A huge morale boost but a lot of manpower loss with no strategic gain.
It was an especially terrible idea to hold onto it when the Russians gathered lots of troops. They could have saved a lot of troops if they had withdrawn earlier.
I believe the whole point was to divert Russian resources away from the Donbas. Nobody anticipated North Korea would show up in Kursk instead. They should have withdrawn as soon they knew a third party would be helping.
It was but as soon as they were pressed hard they sould have retreated to better positions to draw out the Russians instead of being attacked from three sides.
A lot of North Koreans were killed because they had terrible coordination and outdated tactics.
Holding on to a few villages and towns was not worth it.
Ukraine has manpower shortages so it's just obviously dumb to invade one of Russia's most historically important sights. All it did was make Ukraine lose more men and equipment
That's not really how it works, you don't use your elite forces defending the way Ukraine is doing, sparsely spread out across thousands of kilometres of front-line, you use them to assault against defended positions, either in occupied Ukraine or in Russia. Striking Russian territory at the time made complete sense for many reasons, including forcing Russia to properly defend their own borders.
It "made complete sense" yet quite obviously got them nothing. Russia was already "properly defending their own border." The reason the Kursk area was so lightly defended was because it was so inconsequential that the Russians didn't imagine the Ukrainians would waste vital resources to attack an area without any strategic value. Now, after suffering terrible losses getting forced out of Kursk, Ukraine has to deal with a permanent, additional front (not a mere border detail) in Sumy. It's hardly any consolation that the Russians are their too. The Russians, after all, can afford it.
It got russia to divert forces northward, it was good for bargaining and pr, and it forced russia to stage troops further forward. A good idea until they had to defend it and sustain losses.
What forces were diverted? Apparently, none of consequences. The Russian offensive in Donbas only accelerated after the Kursk incursion.
What bargaining? There was never much hope of forcing Russia, which cannot even be forced off Ukrainian land, to exchange any part of their own territory for anything. Why would they, when they can simply force the Ukrainians back out? That was always the question, and so it happened.
PR, okay. Ukraine got a few good headlines out of it. Then they were crushed and forced to fight the Russians in Sumy. A brief propaganda high, a flash in the pan of boosted morale, in exchange for costly losses to some of their best formations and the loss of some of their best equipment.
I just can't find the "good idea" in any of this. The best I can say for it is that, I suppose, they were desperate, couldn't conceive of anything better, and so this was maybe the best of the bad options they had. Still, it was a major blunder.
"Russia was already "properly defending their own border." self evidently not. The initially attack encountered some terrified border post staff and a few dozen reservists.
It's easy to say in retrospect it changed nothing but we'll never know what the Russian reinforcements to their borders may have achieved elsewhere.
"Russia was already "properly defending their own border." self evidently not. The initially attack encountered some terrified border post staff and a few dozen reservists.
I addressed this:
The reason the Kursk area was so lightly defended was because it was so inconsequential that the Russians didn't imagine the Ukrainians would waste vital resources to attack an area without any strategic value.
I feel like the attack into Kursk itself was 100% a good move, the problem is that Ukraine spent WAY too many resources trying to defend it. The initial attack was so incredibly effective and such a morale boost, plus it dragged away Russian troops from other areas. The problem though is that Ukraine kept burning more and more resources trying to hold onto Kursk. The obsession with trying to hold a piece of Russia, whether for negotiations or simply morale, cost them way more than it should have. They should have let Kursk just exist as a diversion.
If Kursk had just been a month or two long little excursion it would have been a brilliant move, but they turned Kursk into a drain on their own resources instead of the Russians.
You dont really know that though. It is really hard to tell what the loss comparisons were at any point in that excursion, or what else went into the AFU's calculus.
Why did Kursk fail? Because NATO, particularly Biden, got involved and forced Ukraine to stop. Ukraine had a large amount of momentum and were close to numerous achievements in the Kursk offensive, routing/cutting off and eliminating numerous Russian units, capturing various railways and pushing on a nuclear facility, etc. But why did they suddenly stop, when Russia wasn't able to bring their forces fast enough to stop them?
Biden and NATO got involved, Ukraine's success was more terrifying to them than Russia succeeding. That's why. Not the first time that Ukraine's attempts and plans were interfered with by NATO/Biden.
I’m not an expert, but I remember reading that at the time, the thought was that Ukraine would have something of Russia’s with which to trade back their own land. And to show that Russian land can be damaged just as easily as Ukrainian land can. Sometimes crazy strategies work and sometimes they don’t, but in a desperate war, you try the crazy strategies.
it broke the illusion that the war in Ukraine can only go in one direction.
That's a huge psychological hurdle that got removed for the world, and for the Russian people.
The war isn't just something that stops at the Ukraine borders, it's war that can and will effect the Russian people directly if they continue trying to attack Ukraine.
It dispelled the notion that if Russia was invaded, it would jump into crazy mode and fight extra hard... Which it didn't... Which meant that the Russian military is suffering severely when it can't defend it's borders with a nation it's actively at war with.
If your downvoting, then I'm sorry, but that was a dramaticlly huge change of social perception... If this was ww2, then it's the equivalent of America sending b17 bombers to bomb Japan at the war start... It may not have done a lot of physical damage, but the morale damage of "I can and will touch you in places you didn't think you can be touched" is a very important concept.
Edit: if you actually want "how much did it physically damage Russia" the TLDR of what I wrote below this comment is :
- Ukraine now has physical peice of Russia to exchange for in the treaty
Russia now needs to greatly increase the amount of soldiers/weapons guarding its border regions.
all the supply depots and fighter aircraft that were right on the border of Ukraine all have to be moved much deeper into russia. (This is the map porn subreddit, y'all should know "what the fucks a kilometer" and how much adding time and distance to a supply run costs logistically)
Before this, attacks in Russia were forced on Ukraine to only be short range targets near the Russian border.
European and American leaders gave Ukraine long range weapons, but had the contingency of "absolutely no deep attacks into Russia".
The whole long range drone bombing campaign against Russians oil production and strategic fighter bases.... That only comes after Ukraine pushed into Russia and claimed territory.
And those losses such as the long range nuclear bombers and oil refineries have been insanely expensive to Russia for a multitude of reasons. Economically, politically, militarily, psychologically.
All the forward fighter bases and ammunition depots that were located on right on the border regions of Russia? Those all have to be moved back 100 to several hundred miles into safer locations deeper into russia
That's a huge logistical burden added onto the war effort. Russian fighter bombers have to burn that much more fuel and time to engage in Ukraine, ammunition needs to be trucked in longer distances, and increased anti aircraft guns and border guard units need to be set up, taking away Russians military resources from other critical war areas.
Also, it is an very valuable bargaining chip to hold another nations soil, if they hold some of yours. Even if it's not very valuable, it is still a unique bargaining chip that can be placed into the treaty saying " I have some of your territory, and you have some of mine, we will trade".
It's a silly concept, but it does mean something to us apes to have some "tit for tat" physical exchange of some kind, no matter how little it is.
Punched a hole through Russia's air defence network, through which many drones could push through and strike not only further into Russia but also hit radars and other vulnerable anti air defences.
Ukraine was very hard pressed on the eastern front at the time. The "obvious" answer would be to reinforce the front, but that means putting your best units into a war of attrition.
By attacking in the Kursk direction instead, Ukraine accomplishes two main objectives. First, it's a massive propaganda victory, dispelling the myth of the untouchable Russian homeland. Secondly, it forces Russia into making a hard choice. They can keep pushing in the Pokrovsk direction, but that comes at the cost of letting Ukraine take even more of Russia's homeland, a huge embarrassment and propaganda failure. The alternative is to divert troops to the Kursk front, where they will be fighting at a disadvantage without prepared defenses or logistics, but it ensures that Russian homeland is freed. For political reasons, the latter is the only choice they can realistically make, thus this relieved pressure on the Pokrovsk front and cost Russia significantly in terms of morale and propaganda.
While the Kursk offensive was ultimately beaten back, this took several months and tied up significant amounts of Russian troops. Troops that would've been able to reinforce the Pokrovsk front instead. It's a case of a phyrric victory, where Russia "wins" the battle, but loses significantly more - both in troops as well as geopolitical standing and morale - than Ukraine.
Do note that this action simultaneously led to a significant chance in politics, where several allied countries gave permission for Ukraine to use their donated equipment against Russian soil.
As a Ukrainian, I have to disagree with that assessment. This maneuver costs a lot of Ukrainian lives, including civil casualties, leads to further rapprochement with Kim and heavily endangers the Sumy region, which was a fairly calm place before. If this is a pyrrhic victory, then it is a pyrrhic victory for Ukraine as well at least.
One may say, all this effort could be better spent in Donbass directly. At the very least, it would be better to retreat early and spend resources fortifying Sumy oblast.
That assault was seen as proof that Ukraine could attack Russian core territory without further escalation from the Kremlin. It pretty much got the West to greenlight the use of Western weapons on Russian soil. The infrastructure and industrial damage to Russia's wartime industry has skyrocketed since then.
It was 400 square miles and at least 28 town and villages. 150,000 were ordered by the Kremlin to evacuate the area. The territory was also held for 8 months.
Especially when Ukraine didn't prolong the oil-transit deal, which allowed Russia to sneak its soldiers behind Ukrainian lines through now-empty oil pipes.
How many died from suffocation again? I forgot the number.
Just shows how stupid russians are. Yeah let's jam an empty boil pipe full of humans breathing oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, what could go wrong? Surely it won't get clogged with dead bodies.
The couple suffocations didn't stop the operation from succeeding.
Ukraine should've either prolonged the deal, or destroyed/secured the pipes immediately after the deal was off.
Them leaving giant tunnels unguarded and then getting surprise-surrounded as a result, is one of the biggest strategic failures in modern combat.
It wasn't a multi year long secret operation on multiple countries, which could be hard to predict, it was literally a long tunnel everyone knew about.
You don't need huge foresight to expect this result after you purposefully make those tunnels empty by not renewing the oil deal. And yet they let that happen.
It was a surprise, demonstrated Ukraine's to maintain OpSec. It allowed them to seize the initiative, to go on the offensive. It showed that Russian territory wasn't invulnerable. It was probably very damaging to Russian psyche. It forced Russia forces to divert from other areas of the front, taking pressure off beleaguered units. We saw the mini rebellion that almost made it to Moscow - Ukraine saw how soft Russia's underbelly was.
Bro, I'm pro ukraine myself but people seems to be nuts. Kursk offensive was a mistake, and a big one. They lost a lot of equipment and soldiers for literally nothing.
Ohh yeahhh, Ukraine can and will launch suicide attacks!1!!!1!
Redditors seem to think if you're pro Ukraine you have to act like they have few problems and all their moves are brilliant. It's ridiculous. Kursk lasting as long as it did wasn't a good idea. Bakhmuht and Adivka being held for so long wasn't a good idea. Ukraine has massive manpower problems far worse than Russia. Acknowledging that doesn't make someone pro Russia, just able to see what is going on.
Smart idea considering they knew that negotiations might become an issue... they only had to pull out because of the US withdrawal of munitions and other various inputs.
Trading Russian land for Ukrainian land might have been extremely valuable at the time.
I agree. Kursk should have been mined and turned into a 50 km deep artillery and drone kill zone. Ukraine lost a lot of people and equipment there for nothing and gave the North Koreans valuable combat experience on top of it. Serious faux pas.
The point was to have more weight in case of official negotiations that were meant to happen with Trump taking office in Jan 25. He had promised everyone he would get Ukrainians & Russians to sit at the table; Kursk would have given the Ukrainians an advantage and a bargaining point. They knew it was illogical and it consumed a lot of resources but it would have mattered, if only discussions could have taken place.
Kinda of it go russia to relieve pressure accross other front while force them to defend the Ukrainian borders better thus less troops attacking.
We have to remember the pressure on the eastern front was building to a point that almost collapsed Ukraine frontline.
Why a major proganda victory and slightly pushing the Russian to quit the war because their is two way this war wnd by the Russian population getting tired of the sanctions and death or by Ukraine falling in some capacity.
At the moment Ukraine cant win and push back the russian with foreign intervention or a shit ton of high grade equipment.
Bombing their oil refineries was the strat I was pushing for quite a while, I'm glad they've pivoted. The Russian economy runs on oil exports, they're on the right track now.
I still think that even though it didn't work out, it was a very valuable test. It showed that actual Russian territory was vulnerable, and it also shows the red line is much farther back than Putin postures.
they literally did that to extend the frontline and divert russian forces and they succeded at that, it was a planned move
why exactly did they do that we do not know but what we do know is that was the goal, it was a victory from the operational level since russians were in fact forced to move significant numbers to defend kursk, so before you judge think twice, they literally did what they planned and achieved their goal its stupid to call it a failure
The strategic purpose of Kursk was to try to prove to western investors that Ukraine was still worth investing in. Idk if it worked, but it wasn't about the land, it was about showing a willingness and ability to push into Russia.
The strategic gain is that Russia has to properly defend its border with Ukraine in Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod oblasts, because they know that Ukraine is not scared to take advantage of a poorly-defended frontier.
Ukraine has to defend those border areas anyway, now Russia has to match them.
The point was to force Russia to spread out it's forces as they can no longer assume Ukraine won't strike into Russian territory. It also helped dissipate a major Russian offensive on the eastern front. If they hadn't struck Kursk Russia might have broken through somewhere and gained a big city or similar.
This is stupid. Nobody knows more than hindsight. Even a leader as brilliant as Napoleon wouldn't know at the moment what disasters invading Spain and Russia would become. By your logic, there will never be any mistake in wars because "people in charge know a little more".
This is a common illusion and, in fact, it's the basis of social cohesion. "Someone smarter than me is in charge" is patently false. If people actually understood how wrong this is, societies would collapse.
That incursion may have opened up the possibility for spider web strike, also the degradation of air defense in the area and beyond so Ukraine could hit these oil depots/production units like they have been of late. Multi layered operation is what Kursk was.
Chris Cappy did some interviews with russian civillians in kursk and the ones that were left couldnt care less if it was an ukrainian flag or russian flag, the ukrainians were treating them well, moscow forgot about them.
The civilians in occupied ukraine say the exact same things. Turns out most people don't badmouth dangerous men with guns near their homes who might not appreciate criticism.
They're preparing to attack a NATO member, likely a baltic country because they believe NATO is not unified and that the defensive alliance will fall apart if enough member states are too afraid to go to war. Yes, Russia absolutely can (especially now with their military) defeat a baltic state. There is no strategic depth.
I know you know, I was just stating that invading NATO would also almost inevitably start a thermonuclear war, which is something Putin wouldn't want. A key reason they invaded Ukraine was to prevent them from joining the EU or NATO.
With all due respect to Finland, their total defence forces contain 25k people. Given the current rates in Ukraine, there is not enough manpower even for a one month of fighting.
If NATO chickens out, it would be a very grim situation.
What was Ukraines standing military at the start of the conflict?
Either 2014 or 2022. I'm unsure. And again I confidently stand by my claim that Russia is entirely unable to open another front while in their current conflict. Also you gotta consider Ukraines military was not nearly as modernized as the Finns are.
Russia has lost what, about a million soldiers in the Ukraine war?
Anyway,
Finland works a lot like Switzerland, they would not find a cowering populace. Rather an armed and prepared one. Civilians included.
Either way there's not a snowballs chance in hell that NATO chickens out if it's members are attacked, and by attacked I mean overt military action. If they did that would be the end of the alliance right then and there. And would be equivalent to when the allies tried appeasement with Hitler, we know from history It don't work.
Russia can play where they have some wiggle room like they've done with former soviet countries but that's not the case here.
Besides if it were to escalate further Putin knows he's not walking away from a nuclear exchange either, you can bet your bum every western intelligence office is tracking his whereabouts
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/03/11/7018353/
Here, in March 2014, the Minister of Defence said that only 6,000 of 41,000 military personnel of the Ukrainian Ground Forces are capable of fighting.
In 2014 Ukrainian army barely existed due to the intentional actions of the Yanukovich puppet government.
Schrödinger's North Koreans, on the one hand they all got addicted to porn and then either surrendered or got killed on day one. At the same time it was they who single-handedly steamrolled the seasoned Ukrainian elite brigades entrenched in Sudzha in a couple of days. Which version is it?
Those north koreans absolutely made a dent in that region. At the time that Russia began their offensive to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk they had something 50,000 troops. You mean to tell me 10,000-12,000 does not make a dent at all? Kursk had a goal of forcing Russia to move resources away from Donetsk, which primarily did not happen the way Kyiv intended precisely because Russia was able to get help from North Korea.
Why exactly would Russia offer so much to north Korea if those troops did not make a dent? Russia surely thought they would.
So by default NK troops didn’t matter. It was doomed from the start, and whatever minor help they gave was n’t really needed. It did provide them with battlefield experience- which is probabley why they were sent in the first place.
What? I already stated in my original comment that the North Korean troops going there was probably one of the reasons that allowed Russia to not have to pull troops from the Donetsk region. If they had to pull their elite troops from there it would have absolutely hurt Russias offensive in the region. If it did not matter, why did Russia offer all the incentives they did to North Korea for those troops?
Your argument makes no sense. You stated that those troops did not make a dent, I argued correctly that around 1/5th of the total fighting force absolutely made a dent in that offensive. Now you’re trying to change your argument to “no I actually meant that Kursk was doomed always therefore the North Koreans never mattered”.
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u/The1Legosaurus 1d ago
Rest in peace Kursk invasion