As I was writing these lines (13th August), international agencies were reporting that the initiative in the Ukrainian Kursk offensive was shifting to the Russian side. The surprise offensive, which began a week earlier (6 August), will end without much result and with significant casualties if the Ukrainian forces are largely driven out of the area. There is no doubt that this offensive took Russia by surprise, if not by surprise.
Meanwhile, on 12 August, international agencies reported an attack on the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which is inside Ukraine but in the war zone and currently under Russian control. One of the elements that made the Kursk region strategic was the presence of a nuclear reactor. Following these developments, it is necessary to consider why the Kiev regime is resorting to such initiatives, which will not change the course of the ongoing war in Ukraine, which is dominated by Russia.
Planned and executed with America?
As expected, the United States has stated that it had nothing to do with the planning and decision-making behind Kiev’s attack. But even if the Ukrainian armed forces, intelligence services and political decision-makers never told the US about this attack, it is not reasonable to think that American personnel in the country as advisers, trainers, etc. were unaware of the preparations. Moreover, given that in addition to American personnel, a large number of military experts, advisers and intelligence officers from the UK, France, Germany and possibly Poland and other Western countries are heavily involved in all Ukrainian military institutions, it is difficult to believe that this attack was planned and executed by Ukraine alone and that they were able to bypass the personnel and intelligence networks of these states.
In this case, it is more plausible that it was planned together with the US and the West. It is also possible to argue that the US and other Western intelligence services were aware of the developments while Ukraine completed the preparations and decided to attack alone, but this is either implausible in many respects or, in terms of its consequences, almost identical to the thesis of a jointly prepared and executed attack.
So what can Ukraine expect from this attack, which does not seem to have much impact on the course of the ongoing war with Russia’s overwhelming superiority on its territory, or even from the bombing of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant? As the esteemed researcher Emre Köse points out in his article in Harici (https://harici.com.tr/kursk-muharebeleri-ve-rusyanin-askeri-stratejisinin-krizi/), did Kiev plan to use this attack to ease the military pressure that Russian forces have been exerting on the strategic city of Kharkiv for a long time, and even as a trump card in the negotiations that are expected to begin after the US elections? Perhaps!
Such a scenario might be possible if Ukraine is able to hold on to the territories it controls in the Kursk region for the long term. They may have planned/thought that Russia would be forced to withdraw troops from the fronts inside Ukraine, especially from Kharkov, or that it would not be able to send new troops to Kharkov. But whether Ukraine has sufficient military power to dislodge Russian forces from the vicinity of Kharkov, as it did in 2022, is another matter. Moreover, without adequate air cover, Ukrainian forces may not be able to hold the Kursk region for long. Otherwise, the Kursk clashes, in which Ukraine mainly used its elite units and suffered many casualties, could produce results similar to those of the Second World War.
As is well known, after halting the Nazi German advance at Stalingrad in World War II, Soviet troops quickly retook the city (February 1943) and began to engage Nazi forces on other fronts. In July 1943, Nazi Germany attacked Kursk, and the Soviet side won a crushing victory in the largest and most comprehensive tank battle in known history, after which the process of driving Germany out of the Soviet Union, and then out of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria (Yugoslavia came under the control of Tito’s partisan forces without the need for Soviet troops), gathered momentum. There is no doubt that the Soviet victory in the battles of Kursk played an important role in the military successes that paved the way for the three Allied leaders (Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt) to meet in Tehran in November-December 1943 to discuss the war, which was now moving in their favour. It seems a strange coincidence that the finalisation of the Soviet victory at Kursk coincided with the current attack on Ukraine.
What could it be for?
In the Second World War, the German forces risked a major battle at Kursk to turn the tide of war that had been turning against them since February 1943, but they lost. What could Ukraine or America have hoped to achieve with this attack? Unless there are interesting developments that suddenly change the course of the war and the Ukrainian forces are forced to retreat with heavy losses, it will be difficult to understand the strategic purpose of Kiev’s operation. Can the strategy of making Russia and the Russian people internally unstable and uncomfortable through actions, sometimes including terrorist attacks, expressed as extending the war to Russian territory, be sustained in the long term? And can a strategic result such as alienating the Russian people from Putin by making them uncomfortable be achieved in this way? It seems very difficult to say ‘yes’ to these questions on the basis of current data.
Could it be that the strategy of opening a front inside Russia is aimed at convincing American and European public opinion, which seems to have become rather reluctant about Ukraine, that the money and military aid sent to Kiev are not being wasted? It could be, because at this very moment the European Union, and in particular its Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a warmonger and supporter of Israel under all circumstances, is busy making the first delivery (4.2 billion euros) of a 50 billion euro package for Ukraine. Von der Leyen and the Baltic states and other former Eastern Europeans (with the exception of Hungary and Slovakia) who share her views may think that Ukraine’s Kursk move is very important and is being used to convince their public opinion to give this money to Kiev, but the elections to the European Parliament and even the general elections in France point to a rapid rise of anti-establishment parties (many of which are also against the continuation of the Ukrainian war).
More important than all this is the US presidential election. Kamala Harris is closing the gap in the November presidential elections, but with the arrival of Trump, who is still expected to be elected, the continuation of this war by the collective West is likely to become almost impossible. Therefore, it does not seem like a conspiracy theory that the war parties and their administrations will either prevent Trump’s election or create conditions that will leave them no choice but to continue the war even if Trump is elected. It is not unlikely that the deep circles ready to assassinate the American presidential candidate are thinking and doing all these things.
Could Ukraine’s Kursk move serve these purposes? Not in its current form, as Russia seems to have the upper hand in the Kursk region. Although it will take time to force the Ukrainian troops to withdraw, this attack cannot have any strategic consequences. If Ukraine, which is struggling to find troops to send into battle, continues to suffer casualties at such a rapid rate, the course of the war on Ukrainian territory could, as suggested above, lead to the Kursk battles of the summer of 1943.
On the other hand, if Ukrainian and Western secret services are doing something in these areas, such as dirty bombs, etc., a strategic objective could be achieved from their side. Was it for such a purpose that Ukrainian forces attacked the cooling systems of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia immediately after the Kursk attack? This nuclear plant, which appears to be under control, is the largest in Europe, but as it is completely under Russian control and has been shut down, it may not pose a threat for the time being. Nevertheless, it is worth paying attention to such news from the Ukrainian front. Because this is one of the most productive areas that the globalist elite can use to stop and, if possible, reverse the general trend that continues against them.
