Russia launches counteroffensive against Ukraine in Kursk border region

Russia has launched its first major counterattack in its Kursk border region more than a month after a surprise invasion by Kyiv’s forces that turned the tables in the two-and-a-half-year war.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday that 10 settlements had been recaptured as a result of “offensive operations” in Kursk since Tuesday, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the “Russians have started counteroffensive actions,” adding that “everything is going in accordance with our Ukrainian plan.”

It remains to be seen whether the news, which confirmed days of speculation by influential military bloggers in both countries, represents a full-blown counteroffensive or a probing of the ground for a bigger operation in the future.

But either way, it marks the first significant effort to retake Russian territory that has been under Ukrainian control for weeks in which President Vladimir Putin appeared to prioritize his own offensive on the eastern front lines of the war.

Ukraine has claimed to hold some 500 square miles of Russian territory in Kursk after sweeping across the border on Aug. 6 and taking Moscow by surprise.

While Putin has vowed to push the Ukrainians out, Russia has struggled to respond and until Tuesday there seemed to be limited resources devoted to driving back the first invasion of Russian land since World War Two.

The Kremlin’s focus instead appears to have remained set firmly on the east of Ukraine, where its troops have been inching closer to seizing the strategically important hub of Pokrovsk.

NBC News was able to geolocate a video purporting to show a column of what appears to be Russian military vehicles moving toward the settlement of Snagost in the Kursk region. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that Snagost was among the 10 settlements liberated in the past two days.

The ministry also noted that the Ukrainians were still mounting counterattacks and attacks in the region in the last 24 hours. Ukrainian forces were also trying to break through the border in other areas of the Kursk region, the ministry said.

What might the counterattack mean?

For now, it appears the Russian attacks in Kursk are being launched on multiple axes, said Christopher Tuck, an expert in conflict and security at King’s College London, and seem to be conducted by better quality troops, including naval infantry and airborne forces.

“It’s really too early to make any informed comment on the nature, scale, or purpose of the attacks,” said Tuck. “Obviously, Russia wants to regain the territory that it has lost. But whether this offensive is the first step in a more concerted attempt to achieve this now simply isn’t clear at the moment.”

Whatever the Russian intentions, attacks in the Kursk area obviously increase the overall pressure on Ukrainian defenses given that heavy Russian assaults are also continuing in the area of Pokrovsk, Tuck said.

It could be that the Russians are trying to get through to their troops trapped in the Glushkovsky district of Kursk after they were cut off by Ukraine blowing up permanent and pontoon bridges across the Seim River in the early days of the incursion, said Oleksandr Musiienko, a Kyiv-based military analyst and head of the Center for Military Legal Studies.

That the Russians would try to counterattack was entirely predictable, and was expected by the Ukrainian troops, Musiienko told NBC News, although he said it was telling that it took Moscow more than a month to “come to its senses” and accumulate a group of forces capable of mounting a counterattack.

Zelenskyy told NBC News last week that he planned to hold the territory his forces had seized in Kursk indefinitely.

But if Moscow succeeds in retaking some of its territory before the U.S. election in November, it could deprive Ukraine of an ace up its sleeve in any peace talks to follow. It could also change the narrative that the operation had been a major success for Ukraine, a much-needed morale boost as manpower and equipment shortages bite elsewhere in the war.

The Russians are likely to continue ramping up the counterattack in Kursk, but that could play into Kyiv’s hands by easing rather than increasing the pressure on its forces in the east, said Musienko.

“The logic is that if they are counterattacking, their losses are growing. And if their losses are growing, they need to be constantly replaced. But who with? Those who will not go to Pokrovsk,” Musienko said.

And Ukraine was preparing for this, he said.

Kyiv’s forces were meticulous in ensuring the security of their flanks and logistical supplies in the areas they seized in the Kursk region, understanding that a moment would come to go into defense mode.

“And,” he added, “that moment has arrived.”