After months in the background of international news, the war in Ukraine has returned to the spotlight with the offensive that Kiev launched in August in the Kursk region, in southwestern Russia.
This action, combined with Ukrainian drone strikes in Moscow and border areas, has fueled speculation about a turning point in the conflict. However, the strong Russian response has escalated the war and clouded those hopes.
On Tuesday (3), an attack on a military institute and hospital in Poltava, in central Ukraine, was the deadliest in the conflict this year, leaving 53 dead and 298 injured.
Last week, Russia attacked 15 of Ukraine’s 24 administrative regions with more than 200 drones and missiles, severely damaging the neighboring country’s energy infrastructure in the largest airstrike since the conflict began.
Before the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, July had already been the deadliest month for civilians in the war in Ukraine since October 2022, according to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, with 219 dead and 1,018 injured.
Ukraine has been urging its allies to lift restrictions that prevent Kiev from bombing Russia with long-range weapons to hit targets further inside Russian territory.
According to sources heard by the English newspaper The Guardian, Kiev’s understanding is that Russia will only consider negotiating if it believes that Ukraine has the capacity to “threaten Moscow and St. Petersburg”.
In an interview with the report, reserve colonel and military analyst Paulo Roberto da Silva Gomes Filho, columnist for People’s Gazettepointed out that the intensification of Russian actions is partly a reaction to Ukraine’s conquest of Russian territory in the Kursk region, and partly a kind of test of how far the Kremlin’s forces can go without greater Western involvement in the conflict.
“This would occur, initially, through authorization – which has so far been denied – for Ukraine to use Western-made military means and systems against targets deep within Russian territory,” explained Gomes Filho.
He considered that it is possible that Russia’s recent strikes will prompt the West to allow the use of its weapons against targets deep inside Russian territory, but dictator Vladimir Putin’s forces will probably be attentive to developments on this issue and will try to “stretch the rope” only to the limit acceptable to Kiev’s allies.
The analyst considered that other important geopolitical events, such as the war in the Middle East, the reaction to electoral fraud in Venezuela and the race for the White House, divert the international community’s attention from the conflict in Ukraine and end up helping Russia.
“The US election in particular constrains the US government to take a more decisive stance, since Washington’s level of engagement in supporting Ukraine is a divisive and controversial issue for the US electorate,” said Gomes Filho.
Regarding the Ukrainian action in Kursk, the analyst explained that Kiev seeks to achieve goals at different levels.
“In politics, he successfully managed to surprise the Russians, taking the conflict to their own territory and weakening the narrative that Russia was only developing a ‘special military operation’ in another country, which in no way affected the daily lives of Russian citizens,” said Gomes Filho.
At the operational level, the expert added, the action sought to open a new combat front that would attract Russian troops from other parts of the combat front, especially from the Donetsk region, “where the Russians are pressing hard and where they have achieved victories and gained ground.”
“This objective was not achieved by the Ukrainians, who remain under great pressure in Donetsk, even though the fighting has reached Kursk,” he highlighted. More than two and a half years after the start of the war, it is gaining momentum again and there is still no prospect of an outcome.
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