Quotes
From the Ukrainian perspective, it's clear: As long as there is fighting in the Kursk region, those forces are not engaged in fighting in Ukraine. As long as the Russians are deploying their air force to drop glide bombs on their own villages, those bombs are not falling on Ukrainian towns,
The biggest risk factor is that chaos or panic will break out — a scenario that affected Russian troops near Kharkiv in 2022,
From a perspective of military strategy, it was a catastrophic choice,
Military objectives are now taking precedence, and these have largely been achieved: minimizing the risk for Ukraine's Sumy region, diverting a certain number of Russian troops from other fronts, and inflicting maximum damage on them,
the defense expert explained Tactically it was successful, but the offensive changed little in the overall dynamic of this war, and failed to achieve its wider operational objectives,
Kursk displaced the conflict on to Russian territory, and Russia used some of its best units to fight for it, but it also required a sizeable number of Ukraine’s elite units to hold the pocket,
said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace My worry is that this gives the Kremlin and the Russian army a new bout of enthusiasm and adrenaline,
said Kyiv-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko The fields we are retreating through are like a spiders’ web with all the fibre optic cables,
said Serhiy, the special operations commander We have no wish to occupy this territory,
Zelenskyy’s aide Mykhailo Podolyak told the Guardian in late August There were political goals, military goals, there was getting the Russians to move troops from Pokrovsk [in Donetsk] to Kursk. And we showed how shameful it is for the Russians, that they can’t fight Ukraine without North Koreans,
At the beginning, the idea was just to create a diversion and to draw troops away from Donbas. But it went better than expected and suddenly we were digging in,
After seven months, we simply withdrew. There was no encirclement,
said one senior security official, painting the operation as a success Everything is going to Kursk,
said one military source in early February At the beginning they didn’t seem to pay that much attention to it, but then the North Koreans came, and then since the beginning of the year they are throwing everything at Kursk, perhaps to try to take it back before negotiating,
Our tasks are to push Russian artillery and other systems further away, destroy the warehouses and other military infrastructure that is there, and also to affect public opinion in Russia,
Only in the last two weeks they started trying to do this, but now it’s too dangerous. They should have done it in September, October, when everything was calm,
The actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces also indicate that the leadership of the Armed Forces has decided to withdraw from the Kursk front,
That’s why in Moscow they are imposing upon the idea of a ceasefire these conditions, so that nothing happens at all, or so that it cannot happen for as long as possible,
Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,
Putin told reporters at the Kremlin after talks with Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president Now we’re going to see whether or not Russia is there, and if they’re not, it’ll be a very disappointing moment for the world,
