- Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk region last Tuesday.
- They have captured around 1,000 square kilometers of Russian land so far, Kyiv’s top general said.
- That figure is almost as much territory as Russia has seized in Ukraine this year.
If that’s the case then Ukraine would need to repeat the Kursk invasion a lot before it made a difference.
Trying to out attrit an opponent with many times the population and GDP is a pretty tall order.
I’m trying to differentiate between things we might like and things that are actually likely.
it’s not just the attrition aspect, it’s the fact that those resources are being pulled away from the other fronts. this would succeed even if all the stuff that Russia sent to Kursk came back intact
I think that still boils down to attrition and relative size.
From what I’ve seen. Russia has only pulled small numbers of troops out of other theaters to reinforce Kursk. They’ve had an ongoing assault on Avdiivka and they don’t seem to have pulled enough troops out of there to slow down the assault.
The impact, both the severity of the impact and the duration of the impact is likely to hinge on how deep Russias reserves are and their overall production capacity. As near as I can tell, they have both in spades.
From what I’ve seen on Russian industrial production they don’t really care too much if all of Kursk were destroyed. It’s not a strategic location (I think) and all the human and material resources can be easily and quickly replaced.
That obviously involves a lot of guesswork on my part. That’s why I’m wondering if someone with expertise just knows the answers to these kinds of questions (and would hopefully also provide sources).