Weekend Update #95: The Discussion of Kursk Versus Pokrovsk Makes Little Strategic Sense
Also Ukraine and the Democratic Convention, A New Ukrainian Ranged System
Hello All,
First of all—Happy Ukraine Independence Day! It was yesterday and the Ukrainians certainly know the value of their independence. What they are doing in fighting for it with such determination gives testimony to its importance. If you have not seen it, President Zelensky released an Independence Day video which needs a watch. He was standing in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia. Here is the official release in Ukrainian.
The Ukrainian government also released a version dubbed into English, but it doesnt have quite the resonance. The thing that is most striking about the speech was its talk of retribution and the repaying of debts (more on that later).
Also, if you didn’t notice, I released a two part podcast for Ukraine-Russia War Talk yesterday. Its an interview I did with Shaun Pinner, a Ukrainian marine who experienced the Hell of Mariupol and was then a Russian POW. It was such an engrossing talk, that it went on for longer than originally planned and needed to be split up into two parts.
Mykola and I will be recording a new podcast in the next few days, so we will be back with a regular episode sometime this week—promise.
This week in the update, its how the Kursk Offensive is going, and being portrayed in relation to the Donbas and even the Russian Kharkiv Offensive, Ukraine and the Democratic Convention, and a little about Ukrainian discussion of a new ranged weapon.
The Discussion of Kursk Versus Pokrovsk Makes Little Strategic Sense
The Ukrainian Offensive into Russia’s Kursk Oblast is now getting close to three weeks old (19 days as this is being written). A few things are becoming clearer.
The first is that Ukraine is preparing to create a very large salient inside Russia—larger than the area Russia has taken in the Donbas in 2024—and to hold it for the foreseeable future. During the last week Ukrainian advances have slowed and one part of the salient has taken shape. Here is the Institute Study of War map of the area Ukraine has seized.
As Ive said for a while now, they have the city of Sudzha, with its road connections and its cutting of Russian rail lines, as the base of operations, and are building out. It looks like the Ukrainians are close to taking Korenevo to anchor the salient to the northeast.
In terms of this war in 2024, this is quite a large area—equivalent to Greater Los Angeles. However that is not all. The Ukrainians have also isolated almost an equivalently large area to the west—the area south of the Seym River, where they have cut the bridges. I have used my rather basic graphic skills and put bars (the blue stripes) on the Deep State Map to indicate the area to which the Russians no longer have bridge access.
If the Russians cant re-establish regular supply to that area, they cant hold it and it will become an addition to the Ukrainian salient. The Ukrainians now control all the roads into the area, so the only Russian option is to get supplies across the river.
What you are looking at is an important strategic achievement. First, the Ukrainians are putting together a large, suppliable and defensible area within Russia itself. Its a very large area, that the Russians will struggle to take back without major force.
Second, it will provide a buffer to the Sumy region in Ukraine itself—as the border with Russia has been pushed back for about 30-35 kilometres for a very wide area. Thats a useful security concern.
However the benefits of the offensive go beyond the battlefield. The Ukrainians have shown their supporters (and particularly the administration) once again how flimsy the supposed Russian red lines are. The Ukrainians have invaded, seized and might soon start fortifying a part of Russia itself—and the Kremlin’s response has been to pretend its the “New Normal”. Two years ago drone attacks into Crimea seemed to cause panic in some quarters—and now we have an actual invasion of Russia.
The Russians will have to defend the rest of their very long border with Ukraine or something like this could happen in another part.
Finally, the narrative of the war has changed. Ukraine has pulled off an operation that Russia simply could not. The opsec, speed and fulfilling of goals that the Ukrainians have done in a few weeks constrasts rather remarkably to the Russian offensive in Kharkiv which was launched in May. At the time that Russian attack was hailed as a strategic coup which would lead to huge problems for Ukraine. Now its a beached whale, which has added to Russian losses.
Note: The Different Ways the Russian Offensive towards Kharkiv was Presented and Analysed Compared to the Ukrainian Offensive into Kursk—Im putting together a paper on it. It demonstrates a rather extreme bias towards the narrative of Russian strength and strategic acumen that seems to permeate much of the western analytical community and press. I will try to finish it this week.
But, but, but Pokrovsk
At the same time the Ukrainian are having this clear strategic success in Kursk, the Russians are doing what they have doing for almost 5 months—slowly plod along towards Pokrovsk. We are being told, constantly, that the Ukrainian Kursk offensive has made this Russian operation more successful—but there is little evidence of this at all. If anything, the Russian advance towards Pokrovsk has slowed in the last week. Its getting there, but extremely slowly.
Here is the Deep State Map from today. the most forward Russian forces are about 14 kilometres from Pokrovsk.
Here is the same map from last Sunday. The closest Russian point to Pokrovsk was just over 15 kilometres.
So, the Russian Army has advanced about ONE MILE towards Pokrovsk this week. Yet this ponderous and bloody advance is being portrayed as a great strategic victory—such as in this article in the Times—and at the same time the Kursk Offensive is being relegated to secondary status.
We have reached peak strangeness in war reporting. Pokrovsk is the latest Ukrainian city to be declared strategic by the press this year (the title has also gone to Avdiivka, Chasiv Yar and Toretsk). Yet none of them are any more strategic than Sudzha, which the Ukrainians took in a few days. Hint—none of these areas are strategic as they dont affect the force generation on either side. Its all about political control of territory.
Moreover, what is fascinating is that Putin’s inability to concentrate the needed force to try and drive the Ukrainians out of Russia is being portrayed as a strategic masterstroke so that he can continue his slow, bloody advances towards Pokrovsk. Again this is so strange. It might be that Russian logistics are so inefficient that he cant actually concentrate the force quickly—so that its some strategically brilliant choice. Moreover, it this slowness is allowing the Ukrainians to carve out their defensible salient—which will cause very high losses for the Russians to retake. Its more likely a sign of strategic failure than anything else.
Rant over—just wanted to point out how very strange the war reporting is. Its more a series of pre-conceived biases being expressed, with evidence cherry picked to support those biases. Its why it was so very wrong at the start of the Kharkiv Offensive, and why it was so ridiculously wrong at the start of the Kursk Offensive.
So far the Ukrainian operation is a strategic success.
Ukraine and the Democratic Convention
The discussion of Ukraine at the Democratic Convention last week was so completely different from that at the Republican Convention in July, that its worthy of note. At the Republican Convention, in the party manifesto and the speeches by Vance and Trump, Ukraine didn’t figure or, if anything, it was portrayed in a negative light. There was no mention of Russia or Ukraine in the GOP platform. In Trump’s acceptance speech there was a word of warning for Ukraine, as Trump spent most of his time praising Viktor Orban (who wants to cut Ukraine off) and praising dictators—I went into this in the weekend update from that week.
Even Republicans who had been supportive of Ukraine avoided the subject. Most depressingly, Nikki Haley, who had a long speaking slot on the second night and spent much of that on foreign policy—never mentioned Ukraine or Russia in her address. Clearly the word had gone out.
The Democratic Convention turned that all on its head.
The Democratic Platform, for one, made an explicit commitment to not only support Ukraine but to respect its territorial integrity. Here is the exact quote.
Democrats will join our European partners in standing up to a revanchist Russia. We will not allow Moscow to interfere in our democracies or chip away at our resolve. We will reaffirm America’s commitment to NATO and defending our allies. We will maintain transatlantic support for Ukraine’s reform efforts and its territorial integrity.
Of course platforms are often forgotten the moment they are written. What is more interesting is what the real star of the week, Kamala Harris, said in her acceptance speech. Remember, this was one of if not the shortest acceptance speeches in modern history, lasting just over half an hour. She also spent much of the time discussing her family background and then going after Trump—so every part of the speech had to be weighed and measured.
Yet, even with those restrictions, She spent much of the small amount of time she had on foreign policy, to attack Trump for being a tool of Putin, and to pledge her support for Ukraine. There were two operative paragraphs where she did this—which are verbatim below.
I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence. That America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership. Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could “do whatever the hell they want.”
Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, I met with President Zelensky to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade. I helped mobilize a global response — over 50 countries — to defend against Putin’s aggression. And as president, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.
Walz, by contrast, spent no time on foreign policy (though he has been one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine—so has established his chops in that area). So it is worthy of note how much time Harris devoted to the subject.
And beyond the Platform and Harris’s speech—Ukraine figured regularly in other addresses. One of the most notable, given not long before Harris spoke, was by Adam Kinzinger. Pitching strongly to anti-Trump Republicans, who might be won over to Harris, Kinzinger made one of the best attacks on Trump/Vance/Putin while supporting Ukraine.
How can a party claim to be patriotic if it idolizes a man who tried to overthrow a free and fair election? How can a party claim to stand for liberty if it sees a fight for freedom in Ukraine—an attack pitting tyranny against democracy, a challenge to everything our nation claims to be—and it retreats, it equivocates, it nominates a man who is weirdly obsessed with Putin and his running mate who said, “I don’t care what happens in Ukraine”? Yet he wants to be Vice President, yeah.
So, all in all, the Democratic Convention set a clear dividing line between the two parties—in particular with the nominees’ speeches (the most important moments). Once again, its worth pointing out to Trump supporters who claim they support Ukraine. Only one party has a commitment to Ukrainian territorial integrity in its platform and is running a candidate who has said they will stand with Ukraine.
Its not Trump and the GOP.
A New Ukrainian Ranged System
This is more a note about something for which to watch out. Yesterday, as part of the Independence Day events, President Zelensky announced the operational use of a new Ukrainian, long-range weapon—which was named the Palyanytsya.
Today, we witnessed the first successful combat use of our new weapon, the Palyanytsya drone missile. This is a completely new class of weaponry—our own Ukrainian innovation,
Now, there are no details on this system or indeed what was attacked—but its interesting that it was described as operational—in other words it was actually put into action. There has been talk of a Ukrainian effort for a while to build a jet-powered, long-range drone. Oleksandr Kamyshin—who will end up playing a large role in the histories of this war when they finally get written—claimed publicly that the weapon “struck an enemy military facility in the temporarily occupied territory.” Moreover, Kamyshin described the weapon as a hybrid UAV/Missile (making jet propulsion more likely) and furthermore said that Ukraine is about to ramp up production.
Ukraine will needs lots of these (mass) to make a difference, but if they can develop and produce an accurate, long-range system of the type being discussed today (and Kamyshin does not BS—I noticed that when I met him) it could be immensely helpful to the already successful Ukrainian ranged campaign. So pay attention to increased attacks, particularly by fast moving weapons in large numbers—not the more primitive (Cessnas with bombs) that the Ukrainians have had to rely on much of the time until now.
Have a good rest of the weekend everyone!
I share your sense of how the media covering the war use the word 'strategic' with tactical abandon, as it were. I spent two decades in news, covering Chechnya 1 and 2, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. I was probably guilty of the same sloppiness (though I hope not to the same degree). Why do you think it happens so readily?
In my experience, it is a combination of inexpert journalists trying to sound cleverer than they are, and the need baked into the medium itself to create meaning where (from time to time) there is very little. For example, it suits all parties (including the audience, perhaps) to say 'The battle continues for the town of X because of its strategic importance' and not 'The battle continues for the town of X for no clear reason, but in part because a gerontocrat without proper frontline intelligence, or the means to receive it, and a disregard for life, and very pliant home front, sitting in full control of the media, wills it so (plus inertia)."
On top of everything, the latter approach is hard to fit into the micro-format that news reporting often takes, and runs the risk of not being read to the end: which means editors and reporters fear for the do-or-die 'engagement' statistics they have to present at the next commissioning meeting.
I am exaggerating, but I think this is the core of it. Much more cock-up than conspiracy.
Ryan McBeth has pointed out just how rare it is for working journos at major outlets to have any experience in uniform, let alone at war. Because they don't understand anything more about strategy than what some self-interested Pentagon hack tells them off the record, reporters and editors fall back on the habits of sports or election reporting to frame the news as a horse-race. Gotta cover both sides and seem objective, after all.