Even two weeks ago, it would have been hard to imagine Ukraine responding to the inconclusive war of attrition in its eastern Donbas region by invading Russia. Yet on 6 August, for the first time since Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941, an invading army crossed the border. Fourteen months ago, someone else had managed to launch an invasion of sorts from inside Ukraine, and many wondered whether an army might find it as easy as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military contractor Wagner Group, to penetrate Russia’s defences. At the time, it was more of a joke than anything else.
In the first two days after Ukrainian troops and armoured vehicles ventured into Russia’s Kursk region, the opinion among military analysts was that this might be imprudent and unwise. Russia has made some progress of late, moving the front line in Donbas closer to the transport and logistics hub of Pokrovsk; many thought stopping its advances there should be Ukraine’s priority. A week later, opinion has shifted. Russia is now at a disadvantage, unable to quickly repel the Ukrainian invasion. Having to evacuate a large number of Russian civilians is humiliating for the Vladimir Putin regime. The war is now being fought on Russian lands. One more of Putin’s red lines has been erased. Are there any left?
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