For Russia, repelling incursion matters less than advancing in Donbas

The barrage of airstrikes that Russia launched against Ukraine over the past two days, with hundreds of drones and missiles, provided punishing evidence of Moscow's enduring military might.

Yet for all that firepower, Russia is still struggling to reclaim a small patch of territory in its Kursk region that Ukraine seized this month. And Tuesday, its military faced attempts by Kyiv's forces to break into the Belgorod region of Russia.

Precisely why Russia has failed to repel the biggest foreign incursion into its country since World War II appears to be not just a matter of personnel and lack of battlefield intelligence, but also of priorities, according to Western officials and military experts.

While caught off guard by the offensive into Kursk, Russia remains more intent on capturing Pokrovsk, a city that serves as a key logistics hub in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, and its leaders have been reluctant to pull troops from that front, the Western officials and military experts said.

"The aim of the Russian summer offensive is at least to take possession of Pokrovsk," said Col. Markus Reisner, who oversees force development at Austria's main military training academy and closely follows the war in Ukraine.

In the three weeks since the Kursk invasion, officials say that Russia's slow but steady gains near Pokrovsk have, if anything, picked up.

As Russian troops continue to advance toward Pokrovsk, "any weakening of the Russian momentum caused by any redeployment is not discernible," Reisner said.

Even so, Russia has begun to respond in Kursk, recently moving in thousands of its forces and threatening to retaliate.

The Ukrainian incursion has "had a shocking effect on the Russians," Christopher G. Cavoli, a US Army general and NATO's top military commander, said in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations on Aug. 15.

But, he added: "That won't persist forever. They'll gather themselves together and react accordingly."

Russia's Slow Start in Kursk

Officials and experts said Russian forces in Kursk had neither the numbers nor the experience to mount a quick defense when Ukraine's troops blitzed over the border Aug. 6. Those who fought did not have enough weapons or other equipment to counter the Ukrainians.

Intelligence provided by Western allies gave Ukraine a clearer picture of where Russian troops were located in the region, helping them to decide what could be captured without much resistance, said Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian and Soviet diplomat who is now a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in Austria.

And it wasn't initially obvious who was in charge of the Russian response. As of now, it's the FSB -- Russia's security agency and the successor to the KGB -- that is tasked with leading the response, not the Russian military's general staff, which is in charge in eastern Ukraine.

"With no clear commander, the Russian forces are more reactive and remain on their back feet, which has allowed the Ukrainians to expand their bridgehead," said Ralph F. Goff, a former senior CIA official who served in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

To date, Ukrainian forces control about 100 settlements in the Kursk region and have captured nearly 600 Russian troops, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's top military commander, said Tuesday. Those numbers could not be independently verified.

A Recent Ramp-Up

But Russia now appears to be planning for a longer-term border confrontation with Ukraine, according to an analysis by the defense intelligence firm Janes. Moscow's response, the analysis concluded, has been "somewhat slow, but is nevertheless methodical and thorough."

Russia has deployed attack helicopters to Kursk and recently increased its artillery strikes against Ukrainian troops there, Sokov said.

On Tuesday, Russia's Defense Ministry said that 400 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and that 30 pieces of Ukrainian military equipment had been destroyed in Kursk over the previous 24 hours. That assertion also could not be independently verified, but Syrskyi separately acknowledged that Russia has deployed 30,000 troops to the region and is sending more every day.

Russia has deployed mostly reserve units and troops from areas in southern and northeastern Ukraine that are not part of Moscow's main thrust toward Pokrovsk. US officials assess that Russia needs at least 50,000 troops to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk.

But already, Reisner said, the Russian reinforcements have "slowed, noticeably" Ukraine's momentum in the region. And it appears that Russia has calculated that diverting enough resources to fully repel the incursion from a tactically insignificant area would not be the best use of its military power -- especially as it compels Ukraine to expend its own assets to hold the territory it has taken.

"If you throw everything you've got to Kursk, then you are playing the Ukrainian game," Sokov said.

The Risks of Collateral Damage

With its intense bombardment of Ukraine this week, Russia has demonstrated that it has more than enough attack drones and missiles to devastate Ukrainian troops on its territory -- assuming Moscow now has the intelligence to ascertain where they are.

But Sokov said Russia may be mindful of harming its own citizens with a scorched-earth response in Kursk. "If you can, you might actually want to be a bit more selective about your targets," he said.

There is also the specter of an accident at the Kursk nuclear power plant, located about 25 miles from the fighting. Operations at the plant are still active, even though it has no protective dome and is therefore "extremely exposed and fragile," Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the United Nations' atomic agency, said after a visit there Tuesday.

Grossi said he was shown fragments of a drone that Russia has claimed tried to attack the plant, although he did not assign blame or responsibility. But if the nuclear reactor was hit, "the consequences could be extremely serious," he said.

It is possible Ukraine is holding back some of its firepower in case it decides to launch a second surprise attack. Some Russian military bloggers have urged Moscow against sending major reinforcements to Kursk that could leave Russia vulnerable elsewhere, said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

The Russian airstrikes that rained down across Ukraine this week likely sought, in part, to divert global attention from the embarrassment of the incursion in Kursk, Reisner said.

But Russia has made clear the incursion will not be without consequences.

"Such hostile actions cannot remain without an appropriate response," Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's spokesperson, told reporters Monday. "There will definitely be a response."