Ukraine is leaning into its efforts to hold onto the Russian territory of Kursk amid intense pressure from Russian and North Korean forces to take it back, apparently gambling that the region could be a valuable card in potential negotiations with Moscow.
After weeks of Russian and North Korean advances in Kursk, Ukraine launched a minor offensive on Sunday to push forces back and retain a grip on the roughly 300 square miles Ukrainian troops still hold.
With less than two weeks before President-elect Trump takes office with a promise to negotiate an end to the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to be doubling down on Kursk as both a strategic necessity and a bargaining chip, despite lingering questions about the operation’s tactical value.
Zelensky called the Kursk operation, which was launched in a surprise attack in August and marked the first time Russia was invaded by a foreign ally since World War II, “one of our biggest wins, not just last year but throughout the war.”
“Russia had to pull almost 60,000 troops off the Ukrainian front to deal with it. As of this Monday, it’s been five months since our troops have maintained a buffer zone on Russian territory,” he wrote Thursday on the social platform X.
Ukraine likely has the ability to hold onto that territory for the foreseeable future, but troops face a stark challenge against the some 12,000 North Korean troops allied with Russian forces in Kursk.
Serhiy Grabsky, a reserve colonel in Ukraine’s military, said the new push in Kursk was more about military strategy than negotiations and was focused on distracting Russia.
“The main idea of this in simple words: to keep Russian forces busy,” he said.
Grabsky said it was also about a message to Trump.
“This action … shows Western alliances that Ukraine did not lose battle capabilities, that Ukraine can and will resist with American support or without it.”
Since Russia began taking back territory over the fall, Ukraine has lost about 40 percent of the ground it once held in Kursk. But a senior defense official said that despite the pressure, Ukraine “continues to hold out against an extraordinary Russian set of assaults” in Kursk and on the eastern front lines of Ukraine.
The official told reporters this week that Kyiv can only be in a position to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin with more pressure on Moscow.
“Our calculation is that Putin is not one to give up something that he doesn’t have to give up,” the official said. “And Putin is going to be most impressed as he faces a negotiation and as he faces a war in which he has not yet achieved his objectives and which the costs are building up on him, he is going to be more inclined to be reasonable.”
Ukraine’s new offensive is aimed toward the towns of Berdin and Bolshoye Soldatskoye, north of Sudzha, but it has been a limited effort, securing some three Russian villages and around nine square miles.
Russian military bloggers claimed Thursday that Ukraine had been cleared out of Berdin, and that Russian forces are advancing northwest and southeast of Sudzha, according to the latest Institute for the Study of War report.
Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army who closely tracks and writes about Ukraine, said the country was likely exploiting an opportunity to inflict casualties on Russia. Zelensky said this week that Russia has suffered 38,000 casualties in Kursk.
“They imposed a significant number of casualties on the Russians and North Koreans recently, and saw an opportunity to either take more ground or even out the front line,” he said.
Ryan said Ukraine will also benefit from holding any amount of territory it can when and if negotiations start.
“Russia occupies 18 percent of Ukraine, and Kursk is much, much smaller than 1 percent of Russia,” he said. “There’s a fairly significant differential in terrain held. That said, it’s always better to hold some of the enemy’s territory when you go into a negotiation.”
Ukraine is facing a ticking clock as Trump prepares to come into office on Jan. 20. The president-elect campaigned on a promise of ending the war within his first day in office but has scaled back those ambitions in recent weeks.
Both sides face acute challenges, with Russia suffering heavy losses and facing an economic recession, while Ukraine struggles to secure manpower and hold ground.
Rafael Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said he was unsure if Ukraine could hold onto the Kursk territory for much longer, describing the region as “increasingly difficult” to defend.
“If the Ukrainians can prove throughout the next couple of months that they will not be cut off in Kursk and the overall situation for the Russian armed forces inside of Ukraine and on the whole front continues to deteriorate at a rate that is unsustainable, that might very well be part of the negotiations,” he said.
“But at this point in time, I think the Kremlin probably looks at the trend lines that are looking bad for Russia, but looking worse for Ukraine,” Loss added.
President Biden has tried to strengthen Ukraine’s hands for the expected negotiations. The U.S. has sent $122 billion in total assistance to Ukraine, around $66 billion of which is military aid.
“If it’s going to oversee such a negotiation, [we want] to make sure [Ukraine is] doing it from a position of strength and that President Trump could get the strongest possible deal,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a Wednesday press conference in Paris.
The last security aid of the Biden administration was announced Thursday, and several billions of dollars approved by Congress will be left over for the Trump administration.
Trump has offered few details about how he might solve the war, but his top Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, has called to threaten to dial back aid to get Kyiv to the table and surge weapons if Moscow becomes an obstacle in the talks.
The centerpiece of the discussions is reportedly that Russia would claim the four territories it occupies in eastern Ukraine in exchange for security guarantees for Ukraine.
But Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Ukraine will “likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months” and that Putin is not interested in real negotiations that keep Ukraine intact.
“Ukraine will not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by Western security guarantees,” he wrote in a piece for The Atlantic. “It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss of sovereignty, and full Russian control.”
Kagan said Trump should consider the choice “between accepting a humiliating strategic defeat on the global stage and immediately redoubling American support for Ukraine while there’s still time.”
Since the Kursk invasion, Ukraine has faced questions of whether the operation was pulling crucial arms and manpower from the front lines in the east, where Russian continues to advance, particularly in the Donetsk region.
But Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials insist the Kursk attack has been vital in redirecting Russian troops from the front lines, taking out military assets, creating opportunities for prisoner exchanges and seizing ground that could be used potentially for negotiations.
Brock Bierman, visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said the limited nature of the Kursk operation might point to Ukraine feeling out Russia’s capabilities and could lead to a larger offensive maneuver.
Bierman also said Ukraine will benefit from any operations to strengthen its position “as the time draws near for the Trump administration to take power.”
“Anything they can do in advance, both Russia and Ukraine, they’re going to do whatever they can because once the Trump administration comes in, they’re going to be much more bottom line,” he said. “I look at both sides trying to leverage as much they can because Trump is going to, in effect, end this war one way or the other.”
