Going on the offensive in Russia is the latest in a quickly growing line of mistakes from Volodymyr Zelensky.
I am losing faith in Volodymyr Zelensky’s judgement. The man was a hero not just in Ukraine but across the West in the first year of the war in Ukraine and after winning the battle of Kyiv and liberating Kharkiv he seemed like the optimal choice of leader in such a trying time. Recently though he seems to be making one strategically daft decision after another. First he dismissed general Valerii Zaluzhnyi as commander-in-chief who led the defence of Ukraine for the first two years. Next he started letting his armed forces increasingly try to use the same tactics he has called war crimes and terror, namely bombing civilian infrastructure. Now the lunacy is complete. Ukraine has launched an offensive in Russia proper.
To say that it reeks of desperation is the understatement of the year. What could possibly be gained in a defensive war by trying to capture the attacker’s territory? I suspect the theory is that it will put Ukraine in a stronger position if there is ever a negotiated peace. The problem is that attacking Russia in this way actively makes a negotiated peace more remote. How could Vladimir Putin possibly come to the negotiating table without looking weak at home? My gut feeling is that Zelensky ordered or at least signed off on the offensive because he feels pressure to deliver wins to the West. No one wants to spend billions supporting a doomed effort, and recently all the news has been about Ukraine slowly but steadily losing ground on the eastern front.
I’m honestly dumbfounded that Ukrainians of all people do not realise what an own goal attacking Russian villages is. Ukraine has become a more cohesive and unified polity in the face of an attacking army, and there is no reason to believe that Russians would act differently. Just imagine the propaganda victory for the Kremlin of showing bombed houses and burnt out cars on Russian soil. “Ukrainian neo-Nazis are hell-bent on destroying Russia, just look at what they did to Sudzha”. The headlines write themselves. The world has known since at least the 1940’s that “breaking the enemy’s spirit” categorically does not work. The blitz did not work, the Russian aerial campaign in Ukraine has not worked, and neither will Ukraine’s effort to bring the war to Russia.
The war in Ukraine boils down to a question of resources. Russia is a much larger, richer country with a stronger economy and a more developed arms industry. The fundamental factors are in Russia’s favour, and attacking the Russians on their home turfs actually helps Russia overcome the difficult political problem of motivating further mobilization. There are now real reasons for Putin to cite in why the war was necessary and why Russia can’t just end it. And his citizens will probably be more supportive of the war now that Ukraine has shown an appetite for taking Russian territory.
I also want to once again warn of escalation. It is a topic I keep returning to on the blog, and while it has not yet happened it is important to realise that any given flashpoint which might trigger an escalation is a discreet crossroad, and the decision reached at previous flashpoints does not necessarily have any bearing on future decision making. Every time the West or Ukraine takes a provocative action there is a risk that the conflict will escalate, and this provocation from Ukraine is by far the worst one yet. So far it appears that escalation is a low probability event, there has not been a really significant escalation in the conflict. But it is also worth remembering that as Russia is a nuclear armed state which has access to both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons any escalation has the risk of having very dramatic consequences.
I think the West, and especially European states realise this. I think that many states which outwardly support Ukraine are horrified by the Kursk offensive. Germany and France know full well that Russia lives in their neighbourhood and since states cannot simply pack their things and move they will have to deal with Russia for decades and centuries to come. I doubt the average German or French citizen truly cares about who controls the muddy fields of Donbass, but in the future France and Germany might well find themselves in a standoff with Russia over something that actually really matters to their citizens or which is material to their national interests. Having a good relationship with Russia might be very useful then, so I doubt they will want to burn bridges by wholeheartedly supporting Ukraine in the Kursk offensive; especially given that the Ukrainian strategic rationale for undertaking the offensive is shaky.
I wrote two weeks ago about why I still think Russia is on the path to winning the war, and two of the reasons I cited are highly relevant to this discussion of the Kursk offensive. I said that Western press seems to be losing interest which makes it less likely for Ukraine to continue getting support from the West, and that war fatigue is cumulative. On the first point, Zelensky and company have undoubtedly found a way to get back in the news but as mentioned, I think it will also spook European policy makers. Secondly, war fatigue happens to both sides but being reminded what one is fighting for lessens the impact of that fatigue.
If Zelensky wanted my help in designing a policy to shoot itself in the foot, I might have offered the following advice: go on the offensive in Russia proper, preferably aim it at some strategically useless town with a beautiful church, and make sure to use elite companies even if you have to rotate them out of the most pressed sections of the eastern front. If this is the sort of policy Zelensky will continue to encourage or even design, then Ukraine is in a significantly worse position than I though. The Kursk offensive is, to put it in plain English, a really fucking bad idea.
If you liked this post you can read a previous post about the war in Ukraine here or the rest of my writings here. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!
I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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