Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion is a Two-Edged Sword

Ukraine, like any belligerent nation that finds itself heavily dependent on external forces, is waging two wars: the actual, corporeal war against Russia, and the information war to court, consolidate, and deepen Western support. The second is just as important as the first, as there can be no viable Ukrainian war effort without a program of sustained Western succor. These two poles have an uneasy relationship, with imperatives of diplomatic and political courtship all too often grinding against the rigors of cold military logic. To see these dynamics at work, one needs only to turn their gaze to the war-torn Donbas region, where the Zelensky government has been loath to withdraw from besieged cities out of concern that the optics of large Ukrainian retreats would dampen Western political enthusiasm. 

Kiev is, in this sense, fighting on two fronts, and the net-sum of Ukrainian decision-making must be seen through this dialectic of having to pursue optimal military policies while keeping Western audiences committed and engaged over the long haul. 

Ukraine’s shock decision not to double down on its defenses in Donbas amid Russian advances but, instead, to launch an incursion in August through the northwest into Russia’s neighboring Kursk region should be understood as a brainchild of that strangely dualistic strategic mindset. 

And the Kursk incursion has yielded precisely its intended effect, at least on the information front. The heroic drama of a small, beleaguered nation daring to take the fight to its larger foe was received in the West with the kind of appetite one might expect. The incursion is “bold, brilliant, beautiful,” said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). It is also “devastating for the Putin regime,” according to Sweden’s recently resigned foreign minister, and has made nonsense out of Russia’s supposed red lines.