In a dramatic twist to the Russia-Ukraine war, Kyiv ordered its armed forces into the Kursk region of Russia on the 6th of August. This marks the first serious incursion into Russian territory since the Nazi invasion in 1941, which will not be lost on millions of stunned Rusians.
The Ukraine army advance, involving a number of brigades and experienced troops, claims it has conquered 1,000 square km of Russian soil and is advancing one to two miles a day, capturing hundreds of Russian soldiers. Jubilant Ukrainian troops have videoed themselves in some of 80 Russian villages captured, as well as the town of Sudzha, pulling down Russian flags and replacing them with Ukrainian flags. Drone attacks on Russian airfields and air defences give cover to the invasion. Hundreds of thousands of Russian civilians have fled the advancing Ukrainian army in the western Russian region, creating another refugee crisis in the two countries.
The Ukrainian armed invasion is a major embarrassment for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime, which has had Ukrainian forces on the backfoot in eastern Ukraine for months. Moscow was taken by surprise by the Ukrainian army’s advance as the vulnerability of its vast borders was exposed. Putin has tried to downplay the major Ukraine assault on Russian territory as “terrorism” and “a provocation”. After the initial shock, Russian forces responded, and a week of heavy fighting took place. It is reported that Russian forces are building extensive trench battlements ahead of the advancing Ukraine troops. A significant rise in military engagements in the region is likely in the next few days, with large scale casualties.
The Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelensky, ordered the occupation of Russian territory from a position of weakness, as Russian forces have made slow but steady advances in the Donbass and eastern regions of Ukraine. Morale among Ukraine armed forces was reportedly falling, raising conscripts proved difficult, and large parts of the Ukraine population have been more open to a peace settlement as the war has dragged on since early 2022 with no sign of forcing Russian forces out of the Donbass region or Crimea.
Despite large scale financial and military hardware funding of the Ukraine war effort from NATO powers, Zelensky has publicly bemoaned that it was not enough to turn the tide in the war with Putin’s regime. The Kyiv regime is also concerned that a return of the Republicans to the White House would see President Trump acting on his threat to quickly bring the war to an end without a withdrawal of Russian forces, so as to pivot US imperialism more firmly against China.
Reckless gamble
While the incursion into Russia has lifted morale in the Ukraine armed forces and wider population in Ukraine, it is a reckless gamble by the Zelensky regime with potentially far reaching consequences. It appears that as well as an attempt to improve troop confidence and facilitate prisoner of war swaps, the main motives for the invasion into the Kursk region are to try and alter the balance of forces on the battlefield in Ukraine. On that front, events are not going well for Zelensky. At the time of writing, Moscow’s forces are advancing rapidly towards Potrovsk, a “defensive stronghold and a key logistics hub” in the eastern Donetsk region. The town’s “capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes and bring Russia closer than ever to its stated aim of capturing the whole region” (Guardian, London, 16/08/24).
Kyiv hopes that Moscow will be forced to withdraw significant numbers of soldiers and war machinery from the frontlines back into Russia to contend with the unexpected incursion. While there are big questions over whether Ukraine has the forces and equipment to maintain its gains long term, Zelensky has hinted that his hand will be strengthened by the Ukrainian army’s land grab in Russia in any future negotiations with Moscow. Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Zelensky, said on Telegram that Ukraine’s lightning offensive into several Russian border regions is designed to persuade Moscow to engage in a “fair negotiation process”.
Western powers have publicly reacted with surprise at the latest military developments and raised some concerns but have also given implicit support to the Ukrainian occupation of parts of the Kursk region. Moreover, western supplied armoured vehicles and air defences are being used by Ukraine forces inside Russia. The British Ministry of Defence has given permission for its weapons to be used in operation on Russian territory, albeit with restrictions on the use of long range Storm Shadow missiles remain, for the time being. Whether western imperialist countries knew beforehand about Kyiv’s plans is an open question. A major NATO conference took place just weeks before the land incursion and western military personnel are stationed in Ukraine as advisors and trainers. Is it possible that such a large-scale military operation was not discussed between Zelensky and his western allies?
These developments mark a new stage in the widening of the war and the ‘normalisation’ of military actions by much of the media and governments that would have been unthinkable to most people in Europe and across the world not so long ago. As well as the biggest war in Europe since WW2, we now have a significant invasion of Russian territory with at least tacit Western backing. This is a serious and dangerous ratcheting up of the conflict. Local and potentially regional wars – as we see possibly developing in the Middle East – are now lodged in the world situation, as part and parcel of the crises of the system of capitalism and the increasing tensions and open conflicts between imperialist powers.
So far, Putin has limited his response to the incursion with threats that it will be repelled decisively. He has not yet repeated threats of a nuclear armed response. Previously Putin warned that foreign armed attacks on Russian soil was a ‘red line’ that could provoke all potential military options. Nevertheless, Putin may resort to such blood curdling threats again should Ukraine forces continue to make significant advances, putting Russia’s ‘territorial integrity’ under an ‘existential threat’. Some western commentators nervous about Ukraine’s incursion ominously warn that if Moscow feels it’s back is to the wall it could take more drastic action militarily. This can include, once again, they claim, attacking a nuclear power plant, following a fire at a plant earlier in the war which they allege was purposefully carried out by Russian forces.
It is likely that Putin will aim to assemble such a military force in the Kursk region as to push back the Ukrainian forces beyond the border to avoid getting bogged down in another drawn out ‘meat grinder’ conflict, this time on Russian soil. However there are reports that Russia lacks ample reserves to divert to expel Ukraine forces at this stage. While the Russian economy has been turned into a ‘war economy’ there are signs it is overheating and faces a growing labour shortage.
On the other side Zelensky faces the danger that his forces will be overstretched. He could be forcibly driven out of Kursk and lose so many troops and equipment that it will dent the Ukraine army’s ability to stop Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
The outcome of the conflict in the Kursk region is therefore open. As the Financial Times (London) puts it: “Ukraine’s advance into Russia may yet turn out to be a turning point, a strategic blunder, or neither”.
The war’s broader context
Zelensky and his western backers have taunted Putin that he is now getting a taste of his own medicine. It is true that Moscow launched an unjustifiable bloody invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. However for Marxists it is not just a question of who pulled the trigger first but the wider context that explains the causes of wars and what approach socialists should take. After the collapse of the former Soviet Union a gangster-capitalist regime that looted the state owned sectors came to power in a chaotic Russia and the living standards of millions of workers plummeted.
Western imperialism saw the opportunity of a hugely weakened foe to expand its power and influence eastwards, as part of its aim to exploit huge natural resources and hundreds of millions of workers. A number of former Stalinist states joined Nato, up to the borders of Russia. The ruling elite in Russia posed this as a long term existential threat. They warned the Russian population with the example of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia by meddling western powers whipping up local ethnic and national animosities.
Later the tensions between western imperialism and the rise of a more assertive Russian imperialism, as the Russian economy re-grew largely due to its oil wealth, found its sharpest expression in Ukraine and the struggle between different factions of the ruling oligarchy. The country has a large ethnic Russian minority mainly in the traditionally industrialised east of the country and in Crimea.
This led to mass protests and violent clashes, including the ‘Orange revolution’ of late 2004/early 2005, that were manipulated by contending oligarchs and their political representatives. A succession of unstable, authoritarian and corrupt pro-Western and pro-Russian governments were followed by violent street battles in Maidan Square, Kyiv, in late 2013, and the coming to power of a pro-Western regime in 2014. Russia then annexed the majority Russian ethnic Crimea. The eastern parts of Ukraine around the Donbass region also declared separation from Kyiv, with Moscow’s support. Fierce fighting ensued between Ukraine armed forces and Russian backed fighters in the Donbass region up to the 24 February 2022 invasion by Putin, who said he drew a red line at Ukraine joining Nato.
Putin probably hoped that a quick military victory over the Ukraine regime would force the western powers to change policy. Instead his reactionary regime faced a Ukraine army that had been rearmed and upgraded by the west. Russia got bogged down in a drawn out conflict at a huge cost in human life and infrastructure on both sides.
For the working class of Ukraine and Russia capitalist restoration and the ensuing conflicts between factions of oligarchs and their outside imperialist backers have only heaped disaster upon catastrophe.
The Committee for a Workers’ International supports an immediate end to the war, for which young Ukraine and Russian soldiers and civilians on both sides pay for with their blood, and for all foreign troops to leave both Ukraine and Russian territory. The people of Donbass and Crimea should be allowed to determine their future in a genuinely democratic way, free of all coercion. A socialist Ukraine and a socialist Russia, as part of a genuinely voluntary federation of equal states in the region, is the only long term solution to poverty, exploitation, ethnic division and wars.
Building independent workers’ organisations and working class unity is a prerequisite to reaching these goals and a common struggle to oppose all the capitalist gangsters and their imperialist backers, and for a socialist society – a democratically planned economy – to transform living conditions.
