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Reference News reported on August 21 According to the Russian Satellite News Agency, Major General Araudinov, Deputy Director of the Military and Political Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, said on the Russia-1 Channel program that the Ukrainian army's actions in the entire Kursk Oblast have been stopped and a large number of its weapons and equipment have been destroyed.

"It should be emphasized that from the moment our troops entered here (Kursk Oblast), we have been blocking the enemy's main forces. We have successfully blocked them and completely blocked the enemy's actions in the surrounding areas," he said, according to the report.

He also added that a large amount of enemy weapons and equipment was successfully destroyed and the enemy's advance troops were hit.

On August 16, Ukrainian soldiers gathered in the Sumy region (Photo from British media)

It was also reported that Smirnov, acting governor of Russia's Kursk Oblast, said that the Russian army shot down two missiles and two drones of the Ukrainian army over the province.

At 19:18 Moscow time on the 20th, Kursk Oblast issued a missile danger alert.

Smirnov wrote on the Telegram social platform: "Our air defense forces shot down two Ukrainian missiles and two drones over Kursk Oblast."

The report also said that the Russian Ministry of Defense said that Russian military forces destroyed as many as 350 Ukrainian soldiers and 25 Ukrainian armored vehicles in the border area of ​​Kursk Oblast on August 20.

The report said: "In one day and night, the Ukrainian army lost up to 350 soldiers and 25 armored vehicles, including 4 tanks, 1 infantry fighting vehicle, 2 armored personnel carriers, 18 armored vehicles, as well as 8 cars, 2 mortars and 1 electronic warfare station."

The ministry's summary of progress in repelling the Ukrainian army's attempt to attack Russian territory in Kursk Oblast stated: "In the battles in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost a total of more than 4,130 soldiers, 58 tanks, 27 infantry fighting vehicles, 50 armored personnel carriers, and 299 armored vehicles."

Further reading

Russia-Ukraine offensive spreads to multiple battlefields and outflanks supply lines. Russian experts: Western support reaches a higher level

Since Ukraine launched a "raid" on Russia's Kursk Oblast on August 6, the fighting between Russia and Ukraine in the region has lasted for half a month.

In the past half month, there have been many speculations about the strategic purpose of the Ukrainian army's surprise attack on Kursk. On August 18, Ukrainian President Zelensky disclosed the main goal of the Ukrainian side. According to CCTV News, Zelensky said that the current priority of the Ukrainian army's overall defense operation is to weaken the Russian combat capability as much as possible and launch a maximum counterattack, including establishing a buffer zone on Russian territory through operations in the Kursk region.

Zelensky also said that "all actions that inflict damage to the Russian army, the state, the military-industrial complex and its economy will help prevent the expansion of the war" and bring Ukraine closer to a just end to the war that has lasted for more than 900 days.

At present, Ukraine is still trying to advance in the Kursk region, while Russia continues to exert its efforts on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.

Rajan Menon, an American political scientist, professor emeritus of political science at the City College of New York, and senior fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, said in an interview with The Paper that there is currently no sign that Russia has begun to deploy large numbers of troops from eastern Ukraine to Kursk.

Andrei Kortunov, academic director of the Russian International Affairs Council, told The Paper that Ukraine is extending the contact line, which often brings risks to the side that is more short of manpower, ammunition and equipment.

On August 19, Russia said that civilian facilities in the Karezh settlement in the Glushkovo district of Kursk Oblast were attacked and the third key bridge on the Seym River was damaged. Earlier, Ukraine claimed on the 18th that it had attacked two key bridges in Kursk Oblast through "precision air strikes", limiting the Russian army's logistical supply capabilities. Russia said that the Ukrainian army may use the US "HIMARS" multiple rocket launcher system to launch the attack. On the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, the Russian army is getting closer to Pokrovsk, an important transportation hub for the Ukrainian army's supply lines in most parts of eastern Ukraine, and announced on the 19th that it had controlled the town of Niu-York.

The Russian army announced that it had captured the town of New York in eastern Ukraine (data map)

US experts: The turning point of the overall war situation has not yet arrived

At present, the Ukrainian army's advance in the Kursk region has slowed down, but the war still has the tendency to continue to spread. The war report released by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War on the 18th showed that the Ukrainian army continued to launch an offensive in the entire salient of Kursk Oblast and made a slight advance in the southeast of Sudja. The Russian army has redeployed more troops to Kursk Oblast, with a total of more than 5,000 people.

Meanwhile, after Russia announced on the 19th that the third bridge on the Seym River in Kursk Oblast was destroyed, Russia may face difficulties in transporting supplies or sending additional troops to the area. The New York Times stated that in the battle between Russia and Ukraine, which is mostly located on flat plains, the tactic of seeking to encircle enemy troops has always been the core tactic of the two armies. Since all three key bridges on the Seym River were destroyed or damaged, local Russian troops may face the risk of being surrounded. After the Ukrainian army recently announced its control of Sudja in Kursk Oblast, Glushkovo was seen as the next possible target of the Ukrainian army.

In addition, following Kursk and Belgorod, the Proletarsk region of Rostov Oblast in Russia declared a state of emergency on the 19th. On the 18th, the governor of the state said that the southeast was attacked by a drone, and the wreckage of the drone caused a diesel fire in an industrial warehouse.

The Ukrainian army's "big bet" is not without risks. Kortunov told The Paper that the Russian army may launch a larger-scale attack on Ukraine's important infrastructure, including energy infrastructure, in the future, and Ukrainian positions in the east and south may be under greater pressure. In addition, Russia will do everything possible to drive the Ukrainian armed forces out of the Kursk region and establish a buffer zone on Ukrainian territory adjacent to the region.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s other goal – forcing the Russian army to withdraw troops from the front and relieve pressure on the Ukrainian army in eastern Ukraine – seems to have not yet achieved its expected results. According to the Ukrainian analysis agency Deep State on the 19th, the Russian army has occupied three settlements in Donetsk, and fierce fighting for the town of Niu-York is still ongoing, while the Russian side claimed on the same day that it had taken control of the area.

In addition, the Russian army is getting closer to Pokrovsk, Ukraine's logistics hub in eastern Ukraine. Al Jazeera and CNN quoted local Ukrainian officials on the 19th as saying that the Russian army is about 10 kilometers away from the suburbs of the city, and the people are accelerating their evacuation. There are still 53,000 people in the area, and municipal services may be cut off within a week. Military analysts believe that considering that Pokrovsk is located on a key road connecting several Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region and has become a resting place for the Ukrainian army after the rotation of the front line, the Ukrainian army will do its best to defend against the Russian attack in the area.

In an interview with The Paper, Menon said that for Russia, the current priority is still to advance as far as possible to the west of Donetsk in order to seize its entire territory. The main targets for achieving this task are towns such as Chasov Yar, Pokrovsk and Konstantinovka in order to pave the way for a larger-scale advance.

Regarding the outside world's judgment that Ukraine's surprise attack on Kursk may become a turning point in the overall war situation between Russia and Ukraine, Menon believes that a cautious attitude should be adopted.

The Ukrainian army recently blew up several bridges in Kursk (Photo from Russian media)

"If the Ukrainian army continues to expand its occupation in the future, cuts off the Russian troops on the right bank of the Seym River, and advances significantly to Belgorod, then Russia will be forced to make some difficult choices. But we are not at that point yet. Everything depends on whether Ukraine can do two things at the same time: prevent Russia from advancing in Donetsk and achieve greater results in Kursk and perhaps Belgorod; resist the increasingly powerful counterattacks of the Russian army and maintain its troops on the battlefield with effective and defensible logistics lines and sufficient manpower and firepower." Menon said.

Outside the battlefield, the Ukrainian attack was also a "psychological war." The Russian Public Opinion Foundation released a weekly poll on the 16th, showing that 45% of respondents believed that people around them were "anxious," up 12 percentage points from two weeks ago. However, the outside world is skeptical about whether the Ukrainian attack and public anxiety will affect Russia's stance on the war.

As the Ukrainian army continued its attack on Kursk, Putin began his visit to Azerbaijan on the 18th. Some analysts believe that this "business as usual" situation shows that Putin firmly believes that Russia has enough resources to defeat Ukraine and the West, and that Russia still dominates most fronts. Some experts from the Institute of War Studies also commented that Putin's visit to Azerbaijan at this time may be an attempt to divert people's attention from the "disturbing situation" in Kursk Oblast.

Kortunov told The Paper that Russia's political stability will not be directly threatened by the Kursk war, and the current social, economic and political system is still very safe. But he also said that this will largely depend on how the situation on the battlefield will develop further.

New stage: The battle situation will be very tense in the next two or three months

After the war lasted for more than two years, the attitudes of the people of Russia and Ukraine towards the war have changed to a certain extent.

The latest poll by Levada, an independent Russian polling agency, showed that three-quarters of respondents in July supported the Russian military's actions, but the proportion of respondents who supported continuing the war had dropped to a low of 34%, and more than half of the respondents supported a transition to peace talks. However, the head of the polling agency attributed a similar trend in July to changes in official rhetoric, including more frequent mentions of peace talks, and said that only a minority of people (17%) believed that Russia should make major concessions, and that most Russians (73%-74%) opposed returning territory to Ukraine.

Polls conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in May and June showed that among adult citizens living in territories controlled by the Ukrainian government, the number of respondents willing to make territorial concessions increased to 32% by May this year, while by the end of 2023, this figure was only 19%. At the same time, 55% of Ukrainians still refused to make any form of territorial concessions.

After the Ukrainian army's surprise attack on Kursk, the prospects for a ceasefire between the two countries became increasingly unclear.

The New York Times said in an analysis article on August 19 that in July this year, while Ukrainian President Zelensky was secretly preparing to launch a surprise attack on Russia, he sent a completely different signal in public, saying that he hoped to end the war through negotiations and end the "white-hot phase" of the war this year. In terms of actions, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister visited several countries in succession, and Ukraine also promoted several international conferences, including the secret "energy ceasefire" talks that were allegedly planned to be held in Qatar in August. The report said that this may have played a role of "strategic deception" to a certain extent, causing Russia to relax its vigilance.

Russian presidential aide Ushakov said on the 19th that given Ukraine's actions in Russia's Kursk Oblast, it is not the right time to enter into negotiations under the current circumstances. The timetable for any potential negotiations "depends on the situation, including the situation on the battlefield." Ushakov also mentioned that the "peace proposal" put forward by Russian President Putin in June has not been abolished. At that time, Putin's conditions included Ukraine's commitment not to join NATO, the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, and the lifting of Western sanctions against Russia.

The picture shows Lavrov's profile picture. He previously said that any negotiations were impossible after Ukraine attacked and even invaded Kursk Oblast.

Kortunov told The Paper that there is no reason to believe that Putin's position has changed in the past two months, and the Kremlin has not sent any signals to confirm the possibility of the "land for land" plan proposed by some Ukrainian people. Russia still hopes to retake the Russian territories seized by Ukraine in the near future, rather than reaching some kind of "exchange" through negotiations. One of the characteristics of the current Russian leadership style is that it is unwilling to make any concessions under external pressure, so there will be no prospects for negotiations in the near future.

"Both sides are preparing for a new round of intensified hostilities, and the situation will be very tense in the next two or three months. We are witnessing another stage of escalation, the conflict is spreading to new areas, and Western support for Kiev has reached a higher level," Kortunov said.

Although Western countries stressed that they did not participate in planning Ukraine's surprise attack on Kursk and did not receive any prior notification from Ukraine, Podoljak, the chief adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office, revealed in an interview with the British Independent that "some things must be taken by surprise" and "partner forces have also discussed it, but not in public." In addition, after the cross-border attack, Ukraine's actions not only received "tacit approval" from Western countries, but it was also revealed that it used weapons and equipment such as Stryker tanks, Marder tanks, and Challenger-2 main battle tanks provided by Western countries.

According to a report by Reference News on August 19, citing the website of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the US private military company Frontline Watch Group posted a photo online of three soldiers posing in front of a high-mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicle. The company's founder was in the center of the photo, and the geographical location of the photo was marked as Kursk Oblast. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov publicly stated on the same day: "If it were not for the instigation of the United States, Zelensky would not have decided to invade Kursk Oblast."

However, Zelensky said on the 19th that Ukraine did not disclose the operational preparations in Kursk Oblast to its allies because the allies might think that this crossed Russia's "strictest red line". Now, the Ukrainian army has controlled 92 settlements and more than 1,250 square kilometers of land in Kursk Oblast, and "the concept of red lines has collapsed". Earlier, Zelensky also "called on" allies, especially the United States, Britain and France, in a speech on the evening of the 18th, asking them to "make a decision" and provide more assistance.

Menon told The Paper that in the face of the Ukrainian military's surprise attack and Western support, Putin may still have some red lines in his mind, but he is unlikely to resort to nuclear war to deal with Ukraine's counterattack. However, all parties should still be aware of the risk of escalation of the conflict.