The War of Attrition’s Kursk Battle: The interim results of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ invasion

Can Russia win a war of attrition?

It is still too early to draw final conclusions about the Kursk operation by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The results will be determined on two fronts: in the Kursk region itself and on the main axis of the Russian offensive towards Pokrovsk. However, it is already clear that the anticipated picture of a victorious 2024 military campaign for the Kremlin has, at the very least, been marred and called into question. Even if Russia captures Pokrovsk and achieves its strategic goals on the main front, as planned, this victory will appear at least ambiguous in light of the vulnerability demonstrated by the Kursk breakthrough.

The immediate goal of the counteroffensive in the Kursk region was to divert Russian troops from the main axis of Russian pressure on Pokrovsk, and this goal has not been achieved. However, the Kursk operation has raised a much broader question: can Russia win a war of attrition against Ukraine?

The Kremlin bet on a long war during the summer and early autumn of 2022, making key decisions to significantly increase military expenditures, expand arms production, and implement ‘partial’ mobilisation. These decisions were intended to create an undeniable advantage for Russia. The Kremlin accumulated resources for a year and a half, successfully repelled the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023, and prepared its own. It also found a reliable source of replenishing its manpower – real commercial contracts that allowed the Ministry of Defence to recruit new contingents for its bloody assaults.

The logic of the slow but inevitable Russian advance during the summer 2024 campaign was meant to demonstrate that the answer to the above question was unequivocal. Russian troops methodically advanced across a broad front, capturing the northeast of Donbas, while the Ministry of Defence reported tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of new contract soldiers recruited on a commercial basis.

All of this was intended to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, with its greater resources of weapons and manpower, Russia would definitively win a war of attrition. This would mean that the continuation of military operations would be pointless, including from the perspective of Ukrainian interests. In such circumstances, the longer the war continues, the more territory Ukraine will lose. The realisation of this set of events would lead to a consensus in the West that a deal must be struck with Putin, to a decreased willingness to support Ukraine's military efforts and, as a result, to a military and diplomatic victory for Moscow. By mid-summer 2024, it seemed that the West was close to reaching such a consensus.

However, the Ukrainian counteroffensive did more than just reveal Russia's unpreparedness for such a development and the vulnerability of the Russian regions bordering Ukraine. It demonstrated that the Russian army has no reserves and that the Kremlin faces a dilemma: either redeploy troops from the Pokrovsk area or temporarily accept the loss of its own territory. In other words, Russia's resource advantage is minimal and is achieved only through the full concentration of forces on the main offensive direction.

The hasty announcements of a twofold increase in contract signing bonuses that followed the start of the Kursk breakthrough only confirm this picture. During the offensive, the Russian army is apparently losing as many wounded and killed per month as it manages to attract through contract enlistment. The increase in payments in the spring did not change this trajectory, and it remains to be seen if the new increase will have an effect.

These circumstances, in turn, bring the discussion back to its starting point: if the West continues to vigorously support Ukraine with resources, Russia is unlikely to achieve a decisive advantage. In this case, Russia’s high losses in manpower and military resources during the 2024 offensive campaign will not lead to a military-diplomatic victory. Moreover, its ability to launch another similar offensive next year remains unclear. In this scenario, both the question of the feasibility of military aid to Ukraine and the context in which negotiations might be prepared would look very different.

The Kursk information battle

In the initial days of the Ukrainian breakthrough in the Kursk region, the Kremlin made a fundamental decision not to stop or slow down the offensive towards Pokrovsk. Instead, when it came to Kursk, it chose to shift the battlefield to the informational and propaganda sphere. That is, to reduce the significance of what happened by all possible means. Hence the famous ‘situation’, as Putin labelled the seizure of Russian territory, and the whole system of euphemisms used by officials. For instance, in his recent comments, Putin spoke of ‘bandits’ who ‘have climbed into the territory of the Russian Federation... in the Kursk region,’ deliberately deforming the reality of the situation.

If Pokrovsk is not captured, it will allow Ukraine and the West to declare the entire summer 2024 offensive a failure. And, if it is taken, it will allow the Kremlin to claim its success despite the ‘situation’ in the Kursk region, which in this case will not develop any further and will lose its informational significance against the backdrop of a ‘cool’ reaction to the events within Russia. By devaluing the impact of the Kursk breakthrough within Russia, the Kremlin devalues the significance and strategic value of the Ukrainian incursion itself.

As the analysis of posts and comments on social media conducted by the OpenMinds project shows, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ invasion of Russian territory immediately became the main topic on the Russian segment of the Internet, with the volume of war-related content tripling after August 6 compared to the previous week. Immediately following the invasion, official propaganda and pro-war correspondents adopted different strategies in covering the events: while the former aimed to downplay the significance of the event, the latter sought to retain audience engagement by fueling ‘patriotic’ panic. The number of ‘positive’ statements about the war sharply decreased, while the number of critical statements directed at the Russian authorities increased. As a result, the index of attitudes towards the war on social media, constructed by the project’s analysts, reached its lowest point in the past 70 days, based on an analysis of over 750 different Russian accounts and channels on VK, Telegram, Odnoklassniki, and YouTube, and nearly 500,000 texts and comments published on these sites.

12% of all comments related to the war on Telegram contained direct criticism of the Russian leadership (such as poor preparation of the Russian army, inadequate or negligible support from the population in the combat zone, etc.). A notable and deliberately promoted narrative was the harsh criticism of the Ministry of Defence, which was held responsible for the Ukrainian incursion and accused of corruption and ‘betrayal’ (this topic was most actively promoted on VK). According to a social media content study prepared by the FilterLabs project, the invasion also affected the tone of comments regarding Putin. From 6 to 16 August, the tone of comments about Putin deteriorated by more than 0.3 points (on a scale of 1.0 to -1.0) in regions with high contract worker recruitment, and by almost 0.4 points in regions with a high share of military production.

In general, the OpenMinds analysis demonstrates that the Russian authorities completely abandoned the opportunities that the situation offered for patriotic mobilisation (‘the enemy has invaded our land’), seeking to present the event as an extraordinary but manageable and not too significant ‘situation’. The normalisation of narratives occurred through several means: by providing more coherent explanations of the futility of the Ukrainian invasion, which cannot halt the Russian advance, vague descriptions of the actions of Russian troops, ‘business-like’ comments from officials about the ongoing evacuation of residents and the assistance provided, and so on.

Diminished impact and disappointed expectations

How successful have the Russian authorities been in convincing the Russian population that there was no ‘Kursk battle’ this time? Russian opinion polls provide important but skewed data about the effects of various events, including the Kursk invasion.

First of all, it can be said that awareness of the invasion is at almost maximum levels, which in itself indicates a strong initial impact of the events. According to the Levada Centre, 94% of those surveyed are aware of the invasion: 51% are closely following the developments, and 43% have heard about them (awareness of the Prigozhin mutiny was even slightly lower: at that time, 52% were ‘following events’ and 40% ‘had heard something about it’). 91% of those surveyed express concern about what is happening (63% find the Ukrainian attack 'very worrying' and 28% 'somewhat worrying'). Russians are most concerned about ‘civilian casualties’ (41%), less concerned about the fact of ‘an attack on Russian territory’ (25%) and ‘the weakness and unpreparedness of the authorities’ (11%). In weekly surveys by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), the number of mentions of the war in Ukraine among the main events of the week surged threefold: from 20% to nearly 60%. However, the latest survey shows some fading of the ‘Kursk effect’.

Which events of the past week, as reported in the media, interested you the most or attracted your attention?, July-August 2024, % of those surveyed

However, assessing the social and political impact of the event based on Russian opinion polls is challenging due to potential sample biases (→ Re:Russia: Pro-War Spring). This bias is particularly evident in the inflation of positive assessments of the socio-political situation in the country. For instance, according to Levada Centre data, an average of 68% of those surveyed believed the country was moving in the right direction over the past year and a half, and this number rose to 73% in the past six months. In contrast, during the 'golden period' of Putinism in 2007-2008, after nearly a decade of high economic growth and rising incomes, only 53% of respondents held this view; in 2014-2015 (after Crimea) it was 59%, and in 2018-2021 it was 48%. The fact that positive assessments of the situation jumped by 20 percentage points after the war began and sanctions were imposed, reaching absolute highs, seems quite absurd but understandable if we assume that in a repressive climate, the willingness of critical citizens to participate in surveys has sharply declined. As a result, positive assessments have reached such a striking majority.

In August, amid the capture of part of the Kursk region, 67% of those surveyed said the country was moving in the right direction, which is 6 percentage points below the average for the past six months. A similar, not overly significant shift can be observed in another inflated indicator – the approval ratings of Putin and citizens’ trust in him. According to FOM, in August, these ratings dropped by 5 percentage points to 76-78%. A similar slight decline was observed during the two previous crisis episodes of the war – after the announcement of mobilisation (to 74%) and during the Prigozhin mutiny (to 73%).

Responses to questions concerning the emotional background of respondents' lives and 'blurred' political indicators appear somewhat more revealing. Thus, according to FOM data, the proportion of those who believe that a calm mood prevails among those around them fell from an average in June-July of 56% (59% at the end of July) to 47% between 11 and 25 August, while the proportion of those surrounded by people in a state of anxiety increased from 38% on average over the two months (33% at the end of July) to 46%. Thus, shifts in this indicator were around 6–13 percentage points. However, this is far from the anxiety levels of 2022, when an average of about 60% of respondents were surrounded by people primarily experiencing anxiety.

The distribution of responses to another FOM question (‘Have the actions of the Russian authorities in the last month caused you personally dissatisfaction, indignation or neither?’) shows that dissatisfaction and outrage with the authorities’ actions were felt by 21% in the past six months, 18% at the end of July, and 28% at the end of August (compared to 42% during the mobilisation in September-October 2022). In the Levada Centre survey (the last week of August), one in four respondents (24%) reported feeling tension, irritation, fear, or melancholy in recent days, which is an increase of 6 percentage points from July.

This data reflects the effect of the Kursk invasion in the sample that is most likely biassed in favour of groups more loyal to the authorities. Without this bias, the effect would likely be more pronounced. It can be stated with some confidence that the invasion is perceived as a type of crisis, though its scale appears significantly smaller compared to the Russian retreat in the summer of 2022 and the announcement of ‘partial’ mobilisation, and comparable to the effect of the Prigozhin mutiny in August 2023.

The political effect of the Ukrainian invasion is suppressed in repressed public opinion just as it is muted in surveys due to sample bias. To some extent, the Russian authorities have managed to quell the rising wave of shock with a deliberately calm and somewhat indifferent attitude towards the ‘situation’.However, its long-term effect is likely to be related to disappointed expectations. There was an observed increase in the proportion of those who believed that the ‘special military operation’ was progressing successfully and bringing the end of the war closer in early summer survey data. In a survey conducted by Russian Field, 69% of respondents expressed this opinion (12 percentage points more than the average in 2023). The Levada Centre survey recorded an increase in the proportion of respondents who believe the war will end within a year (40% compared to one-third in previous surveys). At the same time, Levada Centre surveys showed a growing proportion favouring the start of peace negotiations rather than continuing military actions: 58% versus 36%, compared to an average ratio of 52% to 39% over the previous year.

Thus, the general public perception of the war this summer largely aligned with the views of the Russian leadership: Russia holds the advantage, and once it can fully capitalise on this, the war will end with agreements that are favourable to the Russian side. The Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region dealt a significant blow to these expectations, as well as to the belief that Russia had solved its resource supply issues, particularly in terms of manpower, which had been a pressing concern in previous years.

OpenMinds notes that one of the topics of commentary on the events in the Kursk region, though not particularly prominent in the sample, was the discussion of a new wave of mobilisation. According to Levada Centre, the percentage of those expecting the announcement of a second wave of mobilisation in the coming months increased from 18% in February to 24%, while the percentage of those fearing a general mobilisation jumped from 34% to 46%.

Generally speaking, as in the broader geopolitical arena, the public's opinion on the outcomes of Ukraine's counteroffensive in Kursk has not yet solidified. As the new working year begins, the confidence that had been growing over the summer in a swift and favourable end to the war for Russia is once again in doubt. Similarly, the question of the Russian army's resource inadequacies has resurfaced in the public consciousness, suggesting that achieving victory might require greater sacrifices, including a new wave of mobilisation. Such a development would cause a new wave of shock in Russia.

However, this complex of concerns is currently somewhat muted by the Kremlin's information and propaganda efforts and the diminishing flow of disturbing military news from the Kursk region. Many military analysts expect the climax of the Russian offensive near Pokrovsk in September–October and are sceptical about Ukraine's ability to defend the city. If the Russian army manages a successful breakthrough, it will almost entirely neutralise the impact of the Kursk invasion. However, if the army becomes embroiled in a prolonged assault lasting several months, as in Bakhmut, the 2024 Russian offensive will be viewed as a failure by both the international community and the Russian people.