At the start of August, Ukraine seemed doomed to remain on the defensive, slowly but relentlessly being ground into retreat by Russian onslaughts. But its successful new has done more than seize 480 square miles of Russian territory and humiliate Putin. After nearly a year of a grim defensive battle, the Kursk operation has also allowed Ukraine and force Moscow to dance to Kyiv's tune.
Ukraine had a choice between reinforcing its defenses in the east to stave off continuous Russian attacks in the Donetsk region or to launch its own offensive in the northeast towards Kursk, George Barros, a Russian military expert for the US-based Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider. "I'm sure historians are going to argue for decades about whether that combat power would have been better spent defending the east versus what it did in the Kursk campaign," Barros said. "I think there's a legitimate discussion to be had here, but generally the best principles of war are that it's better to not sit on your back indefinitely and just take a pounding forever.
The Ukrainians now have contested the initiative. The Russians no longer hold the initiative across the entirety of the theater, like they have for most of last year." In April, Barros told BI that Ukraine needed to find a way to to keep Russia off-balance and deprive Moscow of the luxury of massing overwhelming force at a time and place of its own choosing.
Rather than risking everything on a single big offensive — as Ukra.