What’s the real aim of Ukraine’s Russian offensive?

On Monday morning, Vladimir Putin was briefed about Ukraine’s audacious invasion of Russian territory. With his military chiefs in front of him, he announced that Kyiv had been doing the bidding of its western masters but would succeed only in the ‘annihilation’ of the troops it had sent to Kursk. All this was, as usual, broadcast live by the Kremlin to reassure Russians that the President was in control of the situation – then everything started to go wrong.

Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of the invaded Kursk region, had been expected to give details of the successful evacuation of citizens. Instead, he began to reel off the extent of the defeat. The Ukrainians, he said, had captured territory eight miles deep and 25 miles wide. Around 28 Russian towns and villages had fallen. Putin, visibly irritated, interrupted him and said that Ukraine is simply out to ‘improve its negotiating position in the future’. On this, he’s probably right.

The Kursk raid surprised Ukrainians too. When Volodymyr Zelensky pulled elite units out of the Donetsk region, the bloodiest spot on the front line, to redeploy them across the Russian border, the initial reaction was one of anger. The mood then changed to jubilation when the operation turned out to be Ukraine’s first military breakthrough in a long time. But many in the outside world were baffled. Isn’t this incursion a waste of soldiers’ lives and valuable western equipment? Yet the Kursk offensive starts to make sense when you consider that Zelensky is preparing for diplomatic battle.

For more than a year, the war has been a story of superior Russian forces slowly advancing while Ukrainians fell back. The soldiers I spoke to at the front line last month were exhausted and despondent.