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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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Except it doesn't really given that Ukrainian lines are collapsing all across the front while it's doing stunts to convince people in the west that it has fighting potential. The very fact that Ukraine has to fight for the media is one of the biggest handicaps. Russian army is able to fight at its own pace without having to worry about optics. Meanwhile, AFU is forced to constantly show the west that it's still capable of fighting. This has resulted in Ukraine getting drawn into disasters like Bakhmut, the fabled summer offensive, and now Kursk. In each case, Ukraine ends up losing huge numbers of troops and machinery that cannot be replaced without actually gaining anything strategically.
It seems like they took Kursk without losing much. Now they have a bargaining chip for peace talks and possibly diverted attention away from the main front. The western reporting may also get under Putins skin.
Pretty sure they lost at least 3 columns trying to take some towns there.
No they don't. For the territories they occupy to be a bargaining chip, the territories would need to be strategically important enough for their capture to threaten Russia's ability to fight this war (they aren't) and Ukraine would have to be able to guaranty that Russia can't get them back by fighting and is forced to negotiate to get them back (highly doubtful given that Ukraine can't even stop Russian advances in their own territory, only slow them down at best).
Last I've heard Russia haven't even diverted troops from the main front line in Ukraine, so no, it didn't even achieve that. Which makes sense when you know that Russia has way more manpower and equipment than Ukraine right now, this isn't the stare of the war when Ukraine's army was motivated and received billion dollars arms shipments every week anymore.
Forcing the enemy army to split over more front lines only works if you have the resources to maintain more front lines better than your enemy can. Which is why it's Ukraine who are getting stretched thin by their own shenanigans here, not Russia, the Kursk invasion was objectively not a smart move.
That's cute, but war is won with steel and blood, not twitter ratios. "owning Putin" is at best going to be a very short moral boost that's only gonna last until the soldiers on the front line notice that they are still getting shredded en mass by Russian shells all the same as before.