“Ukraine said on Monday its biggest cross-border assault of the war had captured 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of Russia's Kursk region and that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to be forced into making peace… The Ukrainian attack comes after months of slow but steady advances by Russian forces in the east that has forced Ukraine's troops onto the back foot as they try to withstand Russia's heavy use of gliding bombs and assault troops.” Reuters‍

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‍Both sides argue that the offensive strengthens Ukraine’s position and urge NATO countries to allow the use of their weapons in Russia:

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‍“As the war in Ukraine settled into a stalemate, two assumptions became prevalent among analysts: First, that it is nearly impossible to achieve any surprise on a battlefield blanketed by drones. Second, that it is nearly impossible to mount fast-moving offensive operations, given the extensive defenses erected by both sides. Ukraine has challenged both assumptions over the past few days…

“The Ukrainians have practically waltzed into the Kursk region, because the Russians weren’t expecting an attack there. This reinforces the lesson of the June 2023 rebellion by Wagner Group mercenaries, who found a practically open road to Moscow before turning back at the last moment. The interior of Russia is lightly defended, and the lumbering Russian military cannot react quickly to new threats.”

‍Max Boot, Washington Post

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‍“The only surprise is that [this] came so late — two-and-a-half years into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — and that’s primarily because of Western restrictions on the use of donated weapons within Russia’s internationally recognized borders… It’s been absurd to consider those frontiers sacrosanct since the moment Putin sent troops across them; at that point they ceased to be agreed boundaries and became part of a battlefield…

“Ukrainians often lament that the Kremlin’s single greatest strategic success since the invasion’s start has been to persuade the US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies that unless they self-regulated their provision of arms to Kyiv, Putin would launch a nuclear attack. Whether this boiling-the-frog strategy was necessary is a counterfactual, so impossible to answer with certainty. But the argument now looks threadbare.”

‍Marc Champion, Bloomberg

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‍“From the scattered information available, it seems that, at least for now, the Russians are sending a combination of border guards, internal-security troops, and units that had been training or refitting in the area to repel the invasion. This is quite good news for the Ukrainian maneuver forces in the Kursk area, because, if true, that means that they will be facing units that are likely quite ill-equipped to fight an experienced and mechanized enemy…

“The more young Russian boys, in hastily deployed and ill-trained units, die in Kursk, the more precarious the political dynamic might grow for Putin and his regime. And casualties may yet prove to be severe if the Russians decide to throw thousands of untrained young men at the Ukrainian salient.”

‍Mark Antonio Wright, National Review

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‍“So long as Ukrainian forces hold Russian lands, Kyiv gains a powerful bargaining chip in any talks over the war’s endgame. By blitzing troops into Russia’s southern underbelly with Ukraine, Zelensky has also dealt a major political blow to Vladimir Putin. Ukraine’s military strategy to hold part of the Kursk region steals a page from the legendary strategist Sun Tzu: ‘Strike where the enemy is most vulnerable.’…

“The political blow to Putin is significant: This represents the first time since 1941 that a foreign country has occupied part of Russia. It also recalls humiliating foreign military occupations of Russia during its revolution and civil war nearly a hundred years ago. Even now, these events loom large in the Russian political memory. Putin’s rule is premised on his promise to keep Russians safe. For the second time in six months (after the March terror attack on a Moscow concert), he has manifestly failed to do so, for at least some of his citizens.”

‍Peter Doran, New York Post

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‍“That the Russians were caught by surprise shows how much they thought their territory was a sanctuary. This has been one of the goals of Mr. Putin’s bluster about fighting NATO and using nuclear weapons. He wants the U.S. and Western European governments to restrain Ukraine to fight only on its territory. But you can’t win a war only on defense, especially when the invader can mass soldiers, missiles and supplies unmolested across the border…

“The bold Ukraine move is also a lesson to the Biden Administration, which in June finally changed its policy to let Ukraine use some U.S. weapons to strike Russian territory. Mr. Putin is back playing the ‘escalation’ card as he accused Ukraine of a ‘large-scale provocation.’ The provocation was the invasion in 2022 and the missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians… The more Ukraine can put Russia’s war machine at risk, the sooner Ukraine will have more leverage to get more of its own territory back.”

‍Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal

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‍“During the first year of the war as Putin prepared to announce the annexation of occupied Ukrainian city Kherson, he warned that any attempt to reclaim this ‘Russian land’ would result in a nuclear reply. ‘I’m not bluffing,’ he famously declared. But when Ukraine liberated Kherson just weeks later, Putin did not reach for the nuclear button. Instead, he ordered his beaten troops to quietly retreat. Russia’s reaction to wartime setbacks in Crimea has been similarly underwhelming…

“The Ukrainian army’s current invasion of Russia is surely the reddest of all red lines. If Russia was at all serious about a possible nuclear escalation, this would be the moment to make good on its many threats. In fact, Putin has responded by seeking to downplay the invasion while pretending that everything is still going according to plan… There are no more excuses for restricting Kyiv’s ability to defend itself or denying Ukraine the weapons it needs to win the war.”

‍Peter Dickinson, Atlantic Council