The main aim of the Ukrainian operation in Kursk Oblast was to change the calculus in Russia, making war less attractive to Moscow and turning key figures against the man determined to pursue her at all costs - Vladimir Putin.
Many generals and oligarchs will see Putin isolating, shaming and ruining their country in pursuit of what is a personal obsession born of reading too much history during the lockdown.
Prigozhin's rebellion exposed Putin's vulnerability. Sooner or later someone else will act decisively where Prigogine hesitated. Everything Ukraine does is aimed at hastening that day. The fall of Vladimir Putin is now only a matter of time, writes the British newspaper The Telegraph.
The Kursk operation of the ZSU is the most significant Ukrainian military victory in two years. Special units for Kiev crossed the border in advance to prepare the ground. And when the attack on Kursk Oblast came on August 6, it was a textbook example of what strategists call a combined all-arms maneuver. Cyber attacks were combined with armor, artillery, infantry and specialized engineering to disrupt enemy defenses. Russian drones and sensors were blinded by electronic warfare. An air defense umbrella was created, closing the skies to Putin's planes.
Ukraine's strategy is to make the war unpopular with the Russians. Everyone in the former USSR remembers the anti-draft riots that preceded the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. That war claimed 15,000 Soviet lives over ten years. Now it is believed that 10 times as many Russians have died in Ukraine, and in a much shorter time. Now the conscripts' mothers do not have as much political influence. But Ukraine also aims to convince the generals and the siloviki that the cost of war is too high.
In 2002, Putin strongly favored the creation of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, an alliance of six former Soviet republics conceived as an answer to NATO. Yet he has not triggered its Article 4, the mirror image of NATO's Article 5, which requires other members to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. Perhaps he senses that others will refuse to help. It's more likely that he doesn't want to acknowledge the scale of what happened, namely that the special operation that was supposed to crush Kiev within days instead led to the war being carried into mother Russia.
Russia has not yet run out of money. But outside the big cities, the problems of spiraling inflation, shortages of goods and labor, become impossible to hide. Zelensky knows that the surest way to end the war is to depose Putin, who has a mystical longing to establish some kind of protectorate over Kiev, which he sees as Russia's birthplace.
With the operation in Kursk, Zelensky also wanted to send a message to NATO. Some in the West wonder whether they should indefinitely support a war that seems unwinnable. It now seems clear that if Ukraine's NATO allies explicitly allow the use of long-range missiles in Russia, Ukraine will continue to advance. Ukraine significantly tilted the table at the negotiations. While Russia was occupying parts of Ukrainian territory, Zelensky had nothing to bargain with. Now he opened the door to a land swap.