Kyiv launched Kursk incursion despite high-level objections

KYIV — His severe wounds will no doubt alter the course of his life, but the 19-year-old Ukrainian paratrooper has no regrets about the part he played in the surprise and dramatic cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region launched in mid-August.
Like his brothers in arms, he felt exhilarated when the order to attack came crackling along the radio airwaves as the sun rose. Here was the chance to hit back at Russia. “I felt myself a part of history, because it was the first time since the Second World War Russia’s been invaded,” Sergei, the flaxen-haired trooper, told POLITICO, who granted him permission to use a pseudonym as he is not allowed to speak to media.
“I had the most powerful feeling,” he said.
“And another important thing, we didn’t feel the pain we do when fighting inside Ukraine and destroying buildings; then we feel we are damaging part of ourselves, but in Kursk we aren’t burdened with the weight of that sadness,” he said, wrestling to sip coffee with heavily bandaged hands.
Sergei also harbors no doubts about the logic and importance of the offensive, which remains ongoing with Russia mounting a counteroffensive to try to expel Ukrainian forces.
That’s unlike some of Ukraine’s top army commanders, including the former armed forces commander Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, now Ukraine’s ambassador in London, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first broached the offensive earlier this year and pushed for it.
Others who opposed the offensive included the highly respected Emil Ishkulov, commander of Ukraine’s 80th Air Assault Brigade. He was dismissed in July amid protests from high-ranking officers who called for him to be kept in post. “We don’t understand why commanders who have unquestioned authority among the personnel, who have a victorious combat record and experience of a big war, are out of favor to the top leadership of the armed forces,” the commanders said in a protest video posted on social media sites.
Local media reported at the time that the reason for Ishkulov’s dismissal was that he “opposed a task that didn’t correspond to the brigade’s strength.” According to two high-ranking Ukrainian military officials who were granted anonymity to speak with POLITICO, Ishkulov objected to the Kursk operation, fearing his brigade could eventually be too exposed inside Russia and that the casualty toll could rise precipitously.
Zaluzhny’s objection to the incursion, meanwhile, was that there was no clear second step after the border had been successfully breached by elite Ukrainian units drawn from four brigades, according to these officials. Zaluzhny queried: once you have the bridgehead, what then? “He never got a clear answer from Zelenskyy,” said one of the officials. “He felt it was a gamble,” he said.
Zaluzhny did not respond to a request for comment on the Kursk operation. POLITICO was unable to make contact with Ishkulov, but a colleague said he would not accede to a request for comment.
Zaluzhny’s question remains a key one with both Western and Ukrainian doubters worrying that Kyiv’s forces could get caught inside and suffer a demoralizing reversal. Their argument is that the deployment of substantial forces means they can’t be used to hold the line in Donetsk, where Russian forces have maintained a grinding offensive and are bearing down on the town of Pokrovsk and intensifying their operations by advancing towards and along a major highway connecting the cities of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia and pushing at the western Ukrainian defensive lines around Vuhledar.
“Russian forces continue to make significant tactical advances southeast of Pokrovsk, an important logistical hub sitting at the crossroads of some of Ukraine’s most important rail supply routes,” according to the Institute for the Study of War, based in Washington.
Speaking last week in Kyiv at the annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy conference, a high-level gathering bringing together Ukrainian and Western officials, Zelenskyy insisted the situation in Donetsk is normalizing, although he conceded it remained difficult. “In recent weeks the situation in the Donetsk direction, if we are talking about Pokrovsk, has been slightly improved,” he said.  
Zelenskyy linked the fighting in Kursk and Donetsk, suggesting that mounting the offensive on Kursk had forced the Russians to shift resources away from the Donetsk frontlines. “For example, we can see that the number of shells used in Donbas, in Pokrovsk, before the Kursk operation, was 1 to 12. Today it is 1 to 2.5,” he explained.
Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi has echoed the argument, saying recently that Kyiv’s forces had seized almost 1,000 square kilometers of territory inside Russia, forcing the Kremlin to move some experienced troops previously deployed in the Donbas to Kursk.
But that hasn’t stopped Russian troops from continuing to score some tactical successes in Donetsk and maintaining their relentless push. And according to Ukrainian soldiers POLITICO has spoken with, Ukrainian casualties are increasing rapidly in Donetsk, forcing Syrskyi to start redeploying some units from Kursk to beef up defenses in Donetsk.
None of these high-level tactical challenges and questions weigh on Sergei. His mobile armored vehicle convoy, spaced so they wouldn’t get caught altogether by any air or drone strikes, did what was asked of it in the early days of the offensive, tasked as it was to spearhead the drive rapidly forward and not get delayed by any resistance. “We did capture, though,  200 Russian soldiers along the way,” he said.
“Actually, what’s interesting is that all the soldiers that were captured said they had been told that it was likely we would attack but they and their commanders didn’t believe it,” Sergei said. “Most were conscripts from the Urals or around Moscow,” he said.
A key ingredient in the Ukrainians’ rapid advance, he said, was the use of First Person View (FPV) drones. “They were indispensable for us and helped us to prevent counterattacks forming,” Sergei said.
Before he was severely wounded by a Russian drone exploding near him, his brigade had started to advance again after building some defensive fortifications. Sergei said they had halted for re-supplies and to make sure their logistical lines weren’t too stretched, suggesting Ukraine’s political and military leadership has decided — for now — to hold the Kursk bridgehead.