Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion: Six Month Assessment
By Angelica Evans
February 6, 2025
Executive Summary: A small group of Ukrainian troops in Kursk Oblast have complicated the Russian military's efforts to advance in Ukraine over the last six months. Roughly a division's worth of Ukrainian troops have undermined the Russian military's ability to launch or renew offensive operations in lower-priority areas of the frontline and to reinforce priority efforts with elite airborne (VDV) and naval infantry units. The Ukrainian incursion in Kursk Oblast is a partial proof of concept of how limited Ukrainian battlefield activity that leverages vulnerabilities in Russia's warfighting capabilities and that integrates technological adaptations with mechanized maneuver can have theater-wide impacts on operations. It showed that surprise is still possible even on a partially transparent battlefield and that rapid maneuver is possible under the right conditions. The war in Ukraine, in other words, is not permanently stalemated. Either side can potentially restore maneuver and begin to gain or regain significant territory. Russia will be able to do so if the West reduces or cuts off aid. Ukraine may be able to do so if Western support continues to empower Ukrainian innovation.
The Russian military command has gathered around 78,000 troops, including 11,000 North Koreans, in an attempt to expel Ukrainian forces from positions in Kursk Oblast over the last six months. An estimated 11,000 Ukrainian forces advanced into Kursk Oblast in early August 2024, seizing the tactical initiative and complicating the Russian military's Fall 2024 offensive effort.[1] Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly delayed his deadlines for Russian forces to push Ukrainian troops from Kursk Oblast first by mid-October 2024 then by January 2025 and repeatedly prioritized Russian advances in Donetsk Oblast over regaining control of the Kursk salient, which Russian forces still had not done at the end of January 2025.[2] Putin has not been able fully to insulate Russian forces in Donetsk Oblast from the theater-wide impacts of the incursion, however, and the Russian military has simultaneously been pulling troops, armored vehicles, and artillery and air defense systems away from other sectors in Ukraine to reinforce the Russian force grouping fighting in Kursk Oblast. Recent Ukrainian estimates indicate that Putin has accumulated roughly 67,000 Russian troops and 11,000 North Korean troops in Kursk Oblast expel a reinforced Ukrainian grouping in Kursk Oblast that now constitutes at most 30,000 troops by the most generous Western estimations.[3]
Ukraine conducted the incursion at a critical moment to gain leverage in the battlespace and successfully inflicted asymmetric, theater-wide impacts on the Russian military with this limited ground operation. The first seven months of 2024 were characterized by the Russian seizure of Avdiivka in February 2024, continued Russian offensive operations west of Avdiivka in Spring and Summer 2024, the Russian offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast in May 2024, and intensified Russian offensive operations in the Toretsk and Kurakhove directions in June and July 2024.[4] Critical delays in Western aid over the winter of 2023-2024 created shortages in Ukraine's air defense interceptors and Ukrainian artillery units and wider vulnerabilities in Ukraine's ability to defend against Russian attacks.[5] Western leaders and intelligence agencies spent most of early 2024 advocating for Ukraine to maintain an "active defense" and focus on repelling and slowing Russian advances before attempting another counteroffensive operation possibly in 2025.[6] The Ukrainian incursion refocused the conversation and allowed Ukraine to seize the narrative and tactical initiative. The Ukrainian incursion reportedly stymied a planned Russian offensive into Sumy Oblast, prevented the Russian military from substantially reinforcing its offensive in northern Kharkiv Oblast, and complicated but failed to stop Russian advances in priority sectors of Donetsk Oblast.
Ukrainian officials have never suggested that they intended to hold positions in Kursk Oblast in perpetuity. Ukrainian officials have instead repeatedly characterized the incursion as an effort to distract and pin Russian forces away from Russia's main operational objectives in Ukraine.[7] ISW assesses as of February 5 that Russian forces had retaken at least 57 percent (roughly 655 square kilometers) of the Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast.[8] The Russian military certainly can expel Ukrainian forces from Russia whenever it chooses to allocate the necessary resources but has yet to prioritize this effort over making further advances in eastern Ukraine. Russian authorities may prioritize pushing Ukrainian forces from Russian territory in the coming months, however, particularly if Russian officials begin to seriously consider peace negotiations and intend to enter such negotiations from the strongest possible position. It is too early to determine the long-term impacts of the incursion on the resolution of the war in Ukraine, and these impacts will almost certainly be affected by Ukraine's ability to capitalize on the military and political pressures that the incursion has created for Russia. Ukraine may be able to replicate and exploit the pressure that Kursk has inflicted on the Russian military if the West continues to support Ukraine and if Ukraine can address its own manpower, morale, and materiel issues and identify a key location and moment to conduct a similar such operation in the future.
The Ukrainian Incursion into Kursk Oblast
The Russian military command has essentially treated the Russia-Ukraine international border as a dormant front of the theater since 2022 and thus failed to sufficiently fortify and man the border, leaving it vulnerable to Ukrainian attack. The Kremlin has failed to prioritize security along the international border with northern Ukraine throughout the invasion in favor of fortifying and reinforcing Russian positions in eastern and southern Ukraine.[9] The Kremlin has largely relied on Federal Security Service (FSB) border guards, Rosgvardia units, territorial defense units, and poorly trained conscripts to defend the border over the last three years.[10] Russian authorities were reportedly aware of the threat of a future Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast in the months leading up to August 2024 but failed to take adequate steps to address this threat.[11] Russian territorial defense and Chechen "Akhmat" forces successfully defended against limited cross-border raids into Belgorod and Kursk oblasts by pro-Russian all-Ukrainian forces in May and June 2023 and March 2024.[12] Russian forces' ability to defend against the raids and the Kremlin's inability to imagine that Ukraine could conduct a larger cross-border operation may have reinforced the Kremlin's decision to leave the border largely unmanned and vulnerable in Summer 2024.
Putin's apparent assessment that Russian forces are still capable of conducting successful offensive operations into northern Ukraine three years into the war has also disincentivized the Kremlin from fortifying the border. Putin's decision to launch an offensive into northern Kharkiv Oblast in May 2024 indicated that he continued to believe that Russian forces are capable of making significant advances into northern Ukraine like those it made in the early days of the full-scale invasion. Ukraine's ability to contain...
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