Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP
- Ukraine's big move this year was to invade Russia's Kursk region, hoping to divert Russia's main invasion.
- While it took ground in Kursk, Russia was also able to keep up its advance into eastern Ukraine.
- Russia is now amassing troops in Kursk, hoping to retake it without having compromised its main invasion.
When Ukraine began its audacious incursion into Russia's Kursk region in August, it hoped to force a choice.
Russia could keep up its main effort to invade eastern Ukraine, or it could focus on getting the Ukrainians off its own territory.
Three months later, President Vladimir Putin's forces may be able to achieve both.
Ukraine is bracing for a major counteroffensive in Kursk, bolstered by an influx of troops from its ally North Korea.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that there were 50,000 enemy troops there, echoing a US intelligence assessment reported by The New York Times.
That force amassed even as Russia kept up a steady advance on the main front line in eastern Ukraine.
It raises the prospect of a Russian win-win: shaking off the Ukrainian offensive without much compromising its own.
The cost of Ukraine's gambit
Ukraine and Russia were locked in an exhausting stalemate along the main front line earlier this year.
Ukrainian forces broke the deadlock on August 6, taking advantage of disorganized and weak defenses along the Kursk border.
What followed was the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II.
The attack highlighted military intelligence failings from Russia, embarrassed Putin, and saw thousands of Russian citizens displaced.
Russian officials speaking to The Moscow Times soon after said that Putin had taken it like a "slap in the face."
Russia didn't rapidly redeploy troops, though. Instead, a more modest effort saw Ukraine gradually pushed back from about half the land it took.
Meanwhile, Ukraine had to stretch its own resources, including sending some of its best troops away to help hold Kursk.
North Korean backup
Critical to Russia's response was its alliance with North Korea, which furnished it with some 11,000 troops and eased its difficulties recruiting domestically.
Per the assessment of US officials, these troops helped Russia prepare a large counteroffensive without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine's east, The New York Times reported.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, told BI last week that Pyongyang's troops have been distributed across Russian units in the region, and that there had been "daily battles."
He told BI that they were "a serious threat that requires additional resources from our forces," though Ukraine says it has inflicted some losses on them.
A 'collective shrug' from the West
Additional resources, though, are exactly what Ukraine lacks.
Though its Western allies issued stern warnings as the North Korean alliance took shape, they offered little additional support.
Fearful of escalation, and wary of bold moves as power shifts in the US, the West has shown little sign of willingness to go further.
Elusive gains
Attempting to force Russia to weaken its main offensive was unlikely to have been Zelenskyy's only goal with the Kursk incursion, military experts previously told BI.
Ukraine likely also wanted a bargaining chip for future negotiations — and to signal to the West that Ukrainian forces were capable of bold moves, they said.
Whether either of those advantages endure will rest on how well Ukraine can hold off the forces massing against it.