In Ukraine, there are several wars in one. On a large scale, that of tens or hundreds of kilometers, the fronts have been static since the fall of 2022. A global map of this country does not show any notable movement for 21 months.
On a medium scale, Ukrainians have been making progress since August 6… but outside from Ukraine, with their spectacular incursion into Russia on a territory three times the size of the island of Montreal.
On a small scale—a hundred meters or a kilometer—the lines move imperceptibly. But here, it is the Russians who are nibbling away at plots of territory in the Donetsk region—a region which remains roughly divided 50-50 between the two armies.
So there are movements in both directions.
Even though it is militarily questionable, the Ukrainian breakthrough of August 6 is considerable on a symbolic level. It represents in itself a propaganda defeat for the Russian side: it is the first incursion of an enemy army into Russian territory since the Second World War.
Moreover, it is the Kursk region that is affected: the site of a great Soviet triumph during the Second World War, constantly rehashed by Moscow’s “heroic” propaganda. The name is also linked to a catastrophic and humiliating accident, that of the atomic submarine Kurskwhich sank in the Barents Sea in the summer of 2000 following a serious technical failure.
In terms of territory gained, the Ukrainian army is said to have occupied 1,260 square kilometers and about a hundred localities. Figures corroborated by independent observers and recognized by specialist bloggers in Russia itself.
Since spring, on the other hand, the Russians have been advancing a few hundred meters per day, on a small number of relatively narrow fronts.
The Ukrainian breakthrough is certainly the most important in this war for a long time – more important, quantitatively, than everything the Russians have gained in the Donbass for the last three, four, five months.
But it is nothing compared to the approximately 100,000 square kilometers occupied in Ukraine by the Russian army, one sixth of the entire national territory.
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Beyond the numbers… Despite the narrowness of the territory wrested from the Ukrainians in recent months, Pokrovsk, a city of a few tens of thousands of inhabitants, is now in the sights of the Russian army. Experts attribute real strategic value to it.
How solid is the Ukrainian incursion, compared to Russia’s now “embedded” occupation of Ukraine? And what is the purpose of the maneuver?
kyiv’s ability to hold onto this territory for weeks or months to use as a possible bargaining chip remains questionable.
By sending 10,000 soldiers to Russia, aren’t the Ukrainian generals weakening their defense capacity in Donetsk? Volodymyr Zelensky seems to have made the opposite bet: that the Russians would move their soldiers, which would ease the pressure in Donbass.
But that’s not what we’ve seen for three weeks.
The problem is that Russia is almost four times more populous than Ukraine, and it is a dictatorship whose leaders – in the direct line of Stalin – have no qualms about the sacrifice of human lives (including their own).
The problem is not the same in Ukraine, where the lack of troops is glaring, the hesitation in the face of the ultimate sacrifice, real… and the heroism of those who fight, not necessarily enough. The ingenious David faces a clumsy but crushing Goliath.
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What is certain is that kyiv has no territorial claims. Ukraine is not in Russia for good. There are several tactical reasons for the maneuver. The idea of a bargaining chip has been mentioned, although the 1,000 square kilometers now “borrowed” pale in comparison to the 100,000 stolen by Moscow.
There is the desire to teach Vladimir Putin a lesson, and to sow disquiet among the Russian population. But there is also what Zelensky called “the naive illusion of the so-called red lines” advanced by Putin.
kyiv intends to demonstrate to its Western partners that the apocalyptic and nuclear warnings that periodically come from the mouth of the master of the Kremlin – “If you touch a hair of the sacred Russian national territory, with foreign weapons, everything will become possible, including nuclear war” – are nothing but bluff and propaganda.
This is exactly what the Ukrainians have been doing for three weeks in Russia… and Putin’s nuclear threats, as we can see, have remained just words.
Putin is shaken… at the very least, upset. He publicly interrupted, with irritation, the governor of the affected region who was giving the real figures on the Ukrainian incursion. He also denounced, with indignation, “people who indiscriminately attack the civilian population and civilian infrastructure,” and “who try to create threats against nuclear facilities.”
We think we are dreaming when we read these denunciations, which represent a beautiful delirium of “projection” (accusing the other of what we are, or of what we ourselves do)… like his friend Donald Trump, in fact, offers beautiful examples of daily.