Ukraine’s counterinvasion of the Russian region of Kursk on August 6 is a stunning strategic development, prompting some observers to draw historical comparisons with the Vietcong’s surprise Tet Offensive in Vietnam in early 1968 and Hamas’s shocking invasion of Israel on October 7 last year.
More than a week later, there are few signs that the Ukrainian offensive at Kursk is losing momentum.
According to Ukraine's Supreme Commander, Colonel General Okeksandr Syrskyi, Russia has lost control of at least 1,000 square kilometers of its territory and significant numbers of Russian soldiers have been killed, captured or surrendered.
In Moscow, a visibly tense President Vladimir Putin appeared unconvinced on August 7 by assurances from Russia's top general, Valery Gerasimov, that the invading Ukrainian force had been stopped.
On August 11, Putin appointed Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Alexander Bortnikov to lead the “counter-terrorism operation” in the Kursk region.
The Ukrainian invasion has exposed the slow pace of the crisis decision-making process in Putin's authoritarian regime, where virtually all major decisions must be approved by the “boss.”
However, Bortnikov's appointment is likely a sign of an accelerated effort by the Putin regime to reverse the Ukrainian military's territorial gains in Russia.
Bortnikov enjoys Putin’s trust and is known for his ability to effectively manage internal crises that threaten the stability of the regime. But as Ukrainian troops push deeper into Russia, time may not be on the Kremlin’s side.
According to some Western military analysts, Ukraine's decision to withdraw some of its most capable troops from defending the eastern front, where Russian invaders are advancing, appears to be a major risk.
There is a real risk that a regrouped Russian army could regroup and push the Ukrainians out of Kursk, with possible losses of troops and equipment. This could jeopardize Kiev's ability to hold the Russians back on the eastern front.
In many conflict situations, however, the greatest risk is to take no risks at all.
That is certainly the position of the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, which is convinced that the strategic and political benefits of a bold invasion of Kursk far outweigh the risks.
Strategically, the Ukrainian invasion is evidence for the Russians that their border is not sufficiently protected. This reality has already prompted the Kremlin to transfer some of its troops from the eastern Ukrainian front in an attempt to improve the situation in the Kursk region.
At the same time, the Kursk operation is stretching Russian forces and depriving the Putin regime of the strategic initiative, something that is likely to further degrade morale within a Russian military bogged down in a protracted, high-casualty “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Moreover, the invasion of Ukraine is a reaffirmation of the old adage that war is politics by other means. Above all, Kursk is a political-psychological operation aimed at weakening and probably destabilizing Putin's authoritarian regime.
President Zelensky's government has long been frustrated by the Western tendency to inflate and exaggerate Russian power, and is now convinced that Putin's regime is much weaker and more vulnerable than it appears.
By bringing the war back to the Russian population in the Kursk region and neighboring Belgorod, Kiev is showing that the power of the “strongman” in the Kremlin is not so strong after all and that a change of power is possible.
It is striking that Sergei Markov, a security analyst with connections to the Kremlin, candidly admitted to the Western media four days after the start of the Kursk operation that this was “a failure of the entire intelligence system, and since Putin is responsible for this, it is clear that this is a blow to Putin.”
It is unlikely that Markov would openly blame Putin unless there were other strong currents of discontent within Moscow over Putin's war in Ukraine.
We must not forget – and the Zelensky government certainly did not – that in early February 2022, several senior figures within the Russian military expressed their strong opposition to any decision by Putin to invade Ukraine.
We now know that Putin ignored this advice, and it will not have escaped Putin's critics in Moscow that Russia's abject failure to annex Ukraine is now being compounded by a humiliating failure to even defend Russia's internationally recognised borders.
A former ally of Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, responded to the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine with an attempted coup against Putin's regime in 2023, backed by elements in the Russian military.
The attempt failed and Prigozhin died, like many of Putin's opponents.
But the Zelensky government appears to have calculated that the bold Kursk offensive will deal another major blow to the legitimacy of Putin's leadership and contribute to a political climate in Moscow in which a change of power becomes more likely.
From Kiev's point of view, a change of power in Moscow is the fastest way to end the war and fully restore Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and a specialist in international relations, University of Otago.