By Andrew E. Kramer
After months of losing ground to Russia in brutal, grinding battles in Ukraine, Kyiv shifted tactics with a surprise attack into Russian territory this week that caught Moscow off guard and opened a new front in the 30-month war.
Ukrainian forces have punched through Russian border defenses and seized several settlements in fighting that was still raging Thursday, according to Russian officials, a Ukrainian soldier and analysts. The attack triggered a state of emergency in one region in the west of Russia. Ukrainian armored columns were filmed moving along roads as far as 6 miles inside Russia.
But the attack left some military analysts wondering why Ukraine would throw scarce resources into a risky assault in a new area at a time when it is fighting pitched battles to hold on to positions in its own territory.
It was unclear whether Ukraine would seek to hold the area. Whatever the next step by Ukrainian forces, the attack appeared to push the limits on attacking inside Russia with American-provided equipment and put the Russians in disarray. American-made armored vehicles were also filmed being blown up in a Russian counterattack.
The goal was to shift the fighting — and Russian soldiers and weaponry — onto Russian territory and ease the pressure of Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian official said. He asked not to be cited by name, as Ukraine has not acknowledged its soldiers are fighting in Russia.
“We are at war,” he said of striking inside enemy territory. “Why Russia can and we cannot?”
So far the assault has played out “much more successfully” than previous cross-border raids, the senior Ukrainian official said.
Operating surreptitiously to evade Russian reconnaissance and spies, Ukraine gathered a force that Russia’s top general has estimated at 1,000 soldiers for a mechanized assault on Russia’s border, an audacious move after repeated setbacks over the past year and a half.
In Washington, a State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said Wednesday that the use of U.S.-supplied weapons and munitions in the attack by Ukraine did not violate U.S. policy.
“Nothing about our policy has changed, and with the actions that they are taking today, they’re not in violation of our policy,” Miller said.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister who still advises the government, said the goal was not to hold the territory long-term, but rather to challenge the Russians, to “divert their forces, attention and resources.” And “show they have no reserves and no resilience capacity.”
Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst for Rochan Consulting in Poland, writing in Ukraine Conflict Monitor, said Ukraine could benefit if the attack reduced Russian attacks in the Donetsk region of Ukraine and allowed Ukraine to maintain a presence in the Kursk area, and thus improve its negotiating position. But Ukraine would be the loser if its troops were pushed back with high losses, he said.
“There is no middle ground here,” Muzyka wrote. “The operation is daring. Let’s see what the next few days bring.”
Military analysts say they are skeptical that Russia, which has a vastly larger army and arsenal of weapons than Ukraine, would be forced to divert forces from the fighting inside Ukraine to defend its border. Russia has reserves of conscript soldiers it is prohibited by its policies from deploying into Ukraine, but could on Russian soil.
Ukraine has remained mostly silent about the attack, which began Tuesday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seemed to hint at an aim of raising the cost of the war for Russians without directly acknowledging the Ukrainian incursion in a speech Wednesday. “The more pressure is exerted on Russia — the aggressor that brought war to Ukraine — the closer peace will be,” he said.
Zelenskyy, in his nightly address Thursday, again spoke only indirectly of the Ukrainian attack, saying, “Russia brought war to our land and should feel what it has done.”
Surprise played the pivotal role, Roman Kostenko, the secretary of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s parliament, said in an interview. “It was obvious Russia was not prepared and it was a total surprise,” he said. “This is rare in modern war.”
Ukraine, he said, should fight wherever conditions are favorable, whether in Russia or along the front line inside the country. “Our readiness to strike in this way, here or somewhere else, will force Russia to deploy troops to respond.”
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