Kursk invasion: The most important territory Ukraine occupies is inside the head of Vladimir Putin

Do you want to know why Russia has not retaken the part of its land near Kursk that Ukraine invaded and occupied beginning three weeks ago?  The answer is to be found in what Russian forces are doing in Ukraine right now.  They are engaged in bloody battles to take the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, located about 30 miles from Avdiivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. 

The Russians took the town of Avdiivka after a protracted battle that lasted from October 10 of 2022 to February 17 of 2023.  The fighting over Avdiivka had been going on since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.  The Russians bombarded the town, the center of Ukraine’s coke production, for months in early 2022, striking with artillery, mobile rocket launchers and bombing from the air.  The heavy assault caused dozens of civilian casualties.  By April of 2022, only 6,000 of the town’s 30,000 residents remained in Avdiivka, most of them living permanently underground in bomb shelters.  Russian forces reportedly used phosphorus munitions to destroy a school in May.  Phosphorus artillery shells and bombs are banned by international treaties. 

Between July of 2022 and March of 2023, Russia continued to bombard Avdiivka but concentrated its forces on taking control of several small rural villages surrounding the town.  In August, Russia took control of the Butivka coal mine that supplied the Avdiivka coke plant.  Russia bombarded the coke plant itself, a key part of Ukraine’s steel production, throughout the summer of 2022 into the fall. In August, after intense fighting, Russia took the tiny village of Pisky, a few miles from Avdiivka.  We’re talking here of a crossroads in the middle of agricultural fields.  Later that winter, attempting to encircle Avdiivka, using a tanks and artillery, Russia attacked the village of Vodiane, another crossroads in a largely agricultural area.

By March of 2023, only 1,500 civilians remained in Avdiivka, according to the British Ministry of Defense, a reliable chronicler of the war in Ukraine.  The city was largely destroyed by Russian bombardment.  In October, Russia began a full-on offensive to take the town, attacking with motorized infantry, tanks, artillery, and helicopters.  The assault continued through October, with Russia taking heavy losses of armored personnel carriers and tanks.  By November, Russia was throwing its Storm Z penal units, consisting of convicts that had been let out of prison, into the fight for Avdiivka. 

The assault on the town continued through the winter, slowing only because of muddy winter conditions.  In late November, Russia recklessly threw more mechanized and infantry units against Avdiivka’s industrial zone, losing 700 soldiers and more than 40 mechanized vehicles and eight tanks in two days.

Let’s stop right here.  Russia took 700 casualties in two days trying to take a town that was now largely destroyed and emptied of people.  The Russians were firing nearly ten 155 mm artillery shells for every one fired by Ukraine, and outnumbered Ukrainian forces five to one.  Still, by the 18th of December, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed 44 tanks, 60 armored personnel carriers, and 38 artillery weapons in a single 24-hour period.  Ukraine claimed that Russia was losing as many as 300 soldiers every day during the winter offensive.

According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia ordered the 55^th Motorized Rifle Brigade, the 1^st Motorized Rifle Brigade, the 132^nd Motorized Rifle Brigade, a reconnaissance and assault brigade, and the 9^th Motorized Rifle Brigade into the fight in January, attacking the south side of Avdiivka.  In early February, the British Ministry of Defense was reporting that Russia had launched 30 to 50 air assaults a day, using more than 600 guided bombs. 

By mid-February, the battle was street-to-street within Avdiivka, with several Russian brigades having to pull out because they had lost so many troops.  Ukrainian forces were outnumbered and fighting for their lives, lacking ammunition and supplies that had slowed getting from NATO sources to the front lines.  By late February, Russia had 15,000 soldiers engaged in attacking Avdiivka.  A Russian mil-blogger on Telegram reported that 1,300 Russian soldiers had been killed in the last 24 hours.  That is more than 50 soldiers dead every hour.  Two Russian brigades were completely destroyed over a short period, losing an estimated 4,000 soldiers.

Ukraine had begun its pull-out from Avdiivka, out-numbered, out-gunned, and short on supplies.  On February 17, Ukraine announced that it had pulled its forces completely out of Avdiivka to defensive lines north and west of the city. 

By the end of the battle for Avdiivka, the British Ministry of Defense estimated that Russia had lost 1,000 soldiers a day in February alone.  That is 28,000 soldiers killed or wounded.  The ISW estimated that total losses for Russia over the entire Avdiivka campaign had been as many as 50,000.  Ukraine claimed that as many as 60,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded.  Estimates of Russian losses of tanks and armored personnel carriers were all over the map, with one open-source military analysis website counting from public and on the ground Telegram reports that Russian losses of equipment had exceeded 300 military vehicles. 

These are astounding losses.  The United States lost 58,000 soldiers over ten years in Vietnam.  Russia was estimated by some sources to have had as many as 100,000 casualties in taking Avdiivka.

Now, you want to know why Russia has failed so far to retake the 500 square miles of its own territory near Kursk that Ukraine now occupies?  Because it’s doing the exact same thing 30 miles west and north of Avdiivka that it did back in 2022 and 2023.  Russia is trying to take the cities of Pokrovsk, 30 miles west of Avdiivka, and Toretsk, 30 miles north of Avdiivka.  Why is Russia once again throwing away thousands of its soldiers and hundreds of military vehicles and tens of thousands of artillery shells and thousands of ground-to-ground rockets and thousands of glide bombs and everything else they’ve got? 

Because Vladimir Putin decided that he wants to take control of the Donetsk region in its entirety.  He has failed to take Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region, but he’s trying to take the parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are still not controlled by Russia.  The abortive and costly battle for Bakhmut was part of Russia’s effort in Luhansk, for which it paid heavily in blood and treasure.  So was the battle for Avdiivka in 2022 and 2023.  Now Putin is throwing a disproportionate number of soldiers and military equipment and ammunition trying to take two more towns to the east and north of Donetsk…just because he wants to.  That was the military “theory” in the battle for Bakhmut that cost him so dearly.  And it’s his “theory” today. 

Listen to this description by the Institute for the Study of War of the town of Toretsk, yet another industrial Ukrainian city of about 30,000 residents, at least before the fighting started.  “Geolocated footage published on August 28 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced along Chapaieva Street in northwestern Druzhba (east of Toretsk). Russian mil-bloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 500 meters in eastern Toretsk on August 29, although ISW has not observed confirmation of this claim.”  Listen to ISW describe the fighting around Pokrovsk: “Geolocated footage published on August 29 indicates that Russian forces advanced to a windbreak northwest of Svyrydonivka (east of Pokrovsk), northwards in fields east of Hordivka (east of Pokrovsk), up to the Novohrodivska Mine No. 1/3 in northwestern Novohrodivka (southeast of Pokrovsk), and westward up to the Rosiia Mine slag heap north of Mykhailivka (southeast of Pokrovsk).”

They’re talking about Russian advances along streets in Toretsk and through a field and a windbreak and over a slagheap near Pokrovsk.  One British report by a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews points out that Russian forces have been “plodding” towards Pokrovsk for five months and are still ten miles outside the city as they cross “fields” and “windbreaks,” and have moved only a single mile over the last week of fighting. 

The same descriptions were made of the fighting for Avdiivka, a town of about the same size that cost Russia tens of thousands of casualties and the loss of entire brigades of tanks and armored personnel carriers and artillery units. 

Meanwhile, back in Kursk, Ukraine is holding the land it has taken and making small advances.  There are reports that Russia has redeployed forces to defend Kursk from the Kharkiv region, but Putin has not taken forces away from his assaults on Pokrovsk and Toretsk, two more Ukrainian towns that don’t mean a thing militarily except to one man, Vladimir Putin. 

The questions of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion are the same that are asked about any operation of any war:  how far have they gone; have they moved any in the last 24 hours; can they hold the territory they have occupied.  The answers are: 10 to 15 miles in some areas; they haven’t moved much in the last few days; they’ve knocked out some bridges that Russia must use to supply its forces defending Kursk; and so far, Ukraine is holding onto the land it has taken, which according to the ISW, now amounts to an area the size of Los Angeles.

The most important territory Ukraine now occupies, however, is inside the head of Vladimir Putin.  It’s driving him crazy that Ukraine has successfully invaded his country, a disaster that hasn’t happened since the Nazis attacked Russia in World War II.  Within Russia, Putin is facing rare criticism for not responding to the Ukrainian invasion with more force.  The Bulwark recently reported that a Russian military expert, Vladislav Shurygin, “fumed” on a Russian talk show called “The Big Game:” 

“When you call it an SVO [special military operation] when in fact it’s a war, then you get what is happening today. . .The enemy is now on our territory for two weeks after we heard promises to take care of it in three days. We still haven’t heard whose fault it is that this happened. . .After two weeks, the country must see just once an accurate map showing the ground it has lost as of now—the ground our soldiers are going to have to take back at the cost of their own blood. We still don’t have a single regular map anywhere, except for what the bloggers draw up. . .We are starting very seriously to lose the information war.”

Do you see what’s going on here?  Ukraine, a country not even a tenth the size of Russia and with a population a quarter that of its larger, richer, stronger neighbor, is holding its own.  It’s holding its own with the Kursk incursion; it’s holding its own along the 600-mile front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine, and even where Ukraine has lost a few towns like Avdiivka and Bakhmut, the price Russia has paid for its “victories” has been far, far greater than Putin ever thought when he listened to his generals tell him that he could take Kyiv over a long weekend back in February of 2022.

Here is what the world is learning about Vladimir Putin’s Russia:  It is “a pitiful, helpless giant.” That was how Richard Nixon described how the world would see the United States if we didn’t invade Cambodia in 1970.  We learned how well that worked out for us.  We ended combat operations three years later and were gone completely from all Southeast Asia two years after that.

Ukraine may not be winning its war to drive Russia out, but Russia is in no way winning the war Putin originally launched in 2022, which aimed to take over his neighbor, make it part of “greater Russia” and subjugate its people and its territory in the same way he has subjugated Crimea. 

It is reported that Putin thinks the way the Cold War ended with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that ever happened in Russian history.  Right now, the worst thing in Russian history is happening right under his nose as he throws Russia’s blood and treasure at two more Ukrainian towns of no strategic importance, while Ukraine holds onto a piece of Russia that is of little strategic value other than as a highway through Putin’s id on the way to the destruction of his lame, pampered, lie-fattened ego.

January 20, 2025 is going to be the worst day in Putin’s history and one of the best in ours.  When we beat Donald Trump, we’ll beat Vladimir Putin, too.  Glory be!