Zelensky revealed the scale of the problem facing Ukraine in Kursk

The Ukrainian Armed Forces invading a part of Russia’s Kursk Oblast are up against at least 50,000 Russian soldiers according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

Zelensky revealed during a regular nightly address to the Ukrainian people that soldiers fighting in Kursk were holding off a massive Russian grouping of troops in the region. 

"Our men are holding back... 50,000 of the occupier's army personnel who, due to the Kursk operation, cannot be deployed to other Russian offensive directions on our territory," the Ukrainian president said according to BBC News. 

The Ukrainian President also revealed Kyiv’s operation in Kursk was proving effective since it was reducing Moscow’s ability to attack elsewhere, which Zelensky has long said was one of the key objectives of the Kursk operation. 

On August 6th, Ukrainian forces invaded the Russian border region Kursk in what many assumed was a cross-border raid at first but was an operation meant to hold territory. 

Why Ukraine opted to invade Russia has been explained by several officials, including Zelensky. However, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi recently provided a detailed account of the operation’s logic. 

In a November 6th Facebook post, Syrskyi explained the Kursk operation was meant to disrupt an impending Russian attack in the region and was also a way to divert a large number of Russian troops away from other endangered frontlines. 

“In May of this year, intelligence confirmed the enemy's plan to launch an offensive in the Sumy direction from Russia’s Kursk region to establish a so-called ‘buffer zone’ in northern Ukraine,” Syrskyi claimed according to a translation from United24.  

“This was intended as a continuation of the Russian operation in the Kharkiv direction. Therefore, a decision was made to conduct a preemptive offensive operation, shifting combat actions onto enemy territory in the Kursk region,” Syrskyi added. 

While Zelensky’s latest comments revealed that the plan to divert Russian troops away from other frontlines had worked, a November 10th New York Times report suggested Russia amassed its 50,000 troops in the Kursk without pulling them from other fronts. 

"A new US assessment concludes that Russia has massed the force without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine’s east — its main battlefield priority — allowing Moscow to press on multiple fronts simultaneously," the New York Times claimed. 

Whether or not the New York Times is correct isn’t known, but General Syrskyi has also previously claimed that if it were not for the Kursk operation, then tens of thousands of Russia's best assaults would have been storming other key frontline positions. 

Russian troops have been slowly taking back the territory that Ukraine captured in Kursk according to one unnamed U.S. official who spoke with the New York Times, who added that Russian forces have not begun a major assault in the region yet. 

On October 10th, Russian forces launched a counterattack in Kursk that achieved some success in taking back a portion of the land captured by Ukraine. However, Ukrainian forces managed to absorb the attack and retain a large portion of Russian territory. 

On November 11th, The Telegraph reported that Vladimir Putin hopes that the Russian Armed Forces will recapture Kursk before Donald Trump takes office on January 20th, 2025, according to NATO intelligence. 

Trump has promised to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, so if Russia could recapture the Kursk region before Trump tries to force peace talks on Moscow and Kyiv, it could take away a powerful bargaining chip in Ukraine’s corner. 

Whether or not Russia will be able to retake Kursk in the near future has yet to be seen, but the changing geopolitical will likely only add to the death and destruction going on in the region as both countries try to shore up their potential bargaining positions. 

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