Russian authorities have declared a state of emergency in Kursk, a border region where Ukrainian forces have launched a dramatic surprise attack that Kyiv and its closest partners hope will inaugurate a new phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Russia brought the war to our land, and it should feel what it has done,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday. “We strive to achieve our goals as soon as possible in peacetime – under just peace conditions. And it will happen.”
Russian officials denounced the raid as a “terrorist attack by Ukrainian militants … carried out with weapons supplied by the West.” Yet Western officials brushed off the protest as hypocritical — “A little bit rich,” as State Department spokesman Matthew Miller put it Wednesday — while Ukrainian officials and their advocates within the NATO alliance hailed the dramatic operation as a precedent that should weaken Western resistance to Ukraine’s requests for permission to use advanced long-range missiles to strike Russian targets inside Russia.
“Will the events in this or that Russian border region have a psychological impact on (Russian) society? They will, without a doubt,” Mikhail Podolyak, one of Zelensky’s senior advisers, said Thursday, according to a Kyiv Independent translation. “Our partners finally realize that everything connected to Ukraine’s military actions is our sovereign right and a step toward de-escalation and the final end of the war.”
The emotional impact of the dramatic attack received implicit acknowledgment in a public encounter between Russian President Vladimir Putin and acting Kursk Gov. Alexei Smirnov.
“Life is posing unexpected and complicated tasks for you to render assistance to the people in distress,” Putin told Smirnov. “Today’s situation also requires courage and composure in solving these complex, difficult, extraordinary tasks that are now facing all branches and all levels of authority, including the governor and your team.”
The details and objectives of the operation remain unclear, not least because Ukrainian leaders have instructed government sources not to comment on the attack. It is not only the Russians on whom the Ukrainian operation could have a psychological impact, as Western anxiety about the risk of a Russian nuclear attack has spurred the United States and key European governments to place significant restrictions on the aid they provide to Ukrainian forces.
“It takes the counterarguments off the table or eliminates the counterarguments — quite efficiently, actually, to show that, ‘Hey, see, we did it. Well, life goes on,’” a senior European official told the Washington Examiner. “If someone really doesn’t want to give something, now, they need to invent new counterarguments.”
Putin’s associates likewise have argued that the Kursk attack should lead Moscow to “remove all taboos” in the discussion of their war aims.
“From this moment on, the special military operation must become explicitly extraterritorial,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev, a former prime minister under Putin, wrote on social media, per a state media translation. “This is no longer an operation to regain our lands and punish Nazis. We can and should move deeper into the yet existing Ukraine, towards Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolayev. Towards Kiev and beyond.”
The foray into Kursk is the first time that Ukrainian regular forces have conducted an overt attack into Russia’s sovereign territory. “We cannot win the war if we remain constrained by fighting in our territory,” a Ukrainian government source told the Washington Examiner this week. “You need to wage the war in the territory of the aggressor. Otherwise, you cannot win.”
Last year, President Joe Biden’s administration responded to raids reportedly conducted by units of pro-Ukrainian Russian volunteers by saying that “we do not support attacks inside Russia.” The foray into Kursk, which began on Tuesday, drew a different response from the State Department.
“Nothing about our policy has changed, and with the actions that they are taking today, they’re not in violation of our policy,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday.
Biden eased his restriction on the use of American weapons against military targets inside Russia in May to stop Russian forces from enjoying a safe haven on their side of the border during a sustained attack on a major Ukrainian city. European governments have been divided about such operations, with several of Ukraine’s closest neighbors arguing for a removal of all restrictions, while Germany has refused to transfer long-range missiles to Ukraine, even if Ukrainian officials promise not to use them against targets in Russia.
The European Union, nonetheless, sent a supportive message Wednesday.
“The Euro continues to fully support Ukraine’s legitimate right to defend itself from Russian aggression and its efforts to restore sovereignty and territorial integrity,” European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said this week, noting that Ukraine “has the legal right to defend itself, in particular by striking at the aggressor on its territory.”
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Zelensky, for his part, implied that the Kursk attack is a model for ending the war.
“It is important to continue destroying our enemy,” he said Wednesday, without mentioning Kursk explicitly. “And the more pressure is exerted on Russia, on the aggressor that brought the war to Ukraine, the closer peace will be. Just peace through just force.”