Ukraine’s Kursk gamble isn’t paying off

Volodymyr Zelensky is a lonely man these days.

The Ukrainian president’s latest swing through Western capitals, where he met with President Joe Biden in late September and various European heads of state in October, produced little in the way of new security commitments from his foreign backers. Kyiv’s request to use Western-made missiles against targets deep in Russia remains on ice. Zelensky’s so-called “Victory Plan” hasn’t impressed anybody—it’s less of a “plan” and more like a wish-list of weapons that Ukrainian officials have been reciting every week for the last two and a half years.

The battlefield isn’t looking great for the Ukrainians either. Although the Russian army continues to take a beating—September was reportedly its deadliest month since the war began—its offensive in Donetsk is chipping away at Ukrainian defensive positions. Russian President Vladimir Putin is committed to capturing the Donbas region and more than willing to sacrifice a lot of young Russian men to do it. The strategy, however brutal, appears to be working, albeit more slowly than Putin would like. In early October, the Russian army captured Vuhledar after a months-long offensive there; this week, they took Selydove, a small town on the road to the logistical hub of Pokrovsk.

Ukraine’s August offensive into Russia’s Kursk region was supposed to prevent some of this from occurring, or at least force the Kremlin to make some difficult decisions about where to allocate its troops and resources. Zelensky’s decision caught the United States, its biggest military backer, by surprise and caused divisions within the Ukrainian military establishment. According to a September report in Politico Europe, Valery Zaluzhny, Kyiv’s top military commander during the first two years of the war, objected because he believed the plan wasn’t thought out well enough. Zelensky, however, viewed the incursion as a way to turn the tables after a year of bruising losses.

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