ISW: Ukraine’s Kursk incursion shows Russian border is not impermeable

Kyiv’s military operation into Russia just over two weeks ago caught everyone off guard, including Moscow.

Transcript

00:00Two weeks into Kiev's surprise incursion into Russian territory and Ukrainian forces show

00:06no sign of stopping. As Ukraine crossing from Sumy into Russia's Kursk region caught everyone

00:13off guard, including civilians, observers, Ukraine's Western allies and some Russian

00:18authorities. According to Institute for the Study of War analysts, the operational security

00:24was crucial.

00:25The basically secrecy in which the planning for this was shrouded in is proving to be

00:31very, very important. And I think that Ukraine rightly learned from its experience planning

00:38for the 2023 counteroffensive last year, because there was a lot of messaging and a lot of

00:43telegraphing for that. And it really allowed the West, but also Russia to basically anticipate

00:52where Ukraine was going to attack and when. Experts from the Institute for the Study

00:57of War believes that seeing the conflict reach their own border could change the Russian

01:03people's perspective on the war.

01:12There's so many nuances that right now seem very fresh, but I think will generate discontent

01:18in the long term. The use of conscripts, for example, and then more broadly, that idea

01:24that the Russian border is not impermeable, that it is actually a vulnerability and that

01:30Russian society needs to start seeing it as a vulnerability. I think that will change

01:36a lot of the ways that Russian society is viewing the war and seeing kind of how the

01:42war can actually be felt by the Russian domestic populace, whereas they've been very largely

01:47apathetic towards it in the past.

01:52Ukraine claims to have seized over 1,000 square kilometres in the Kursk region, surpassing

01:57what Russia captured in Ukraine over eight months. Yet the term war remains banned here,

02:04as it does throughout the rest of Russia.