Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia hasn’t taken the pressure off the most dire front-line battles

Business Insider could not independently verify Syrskyi’s figure, but US officials have previously confirmed the movement of Russian troops to Kursk from other areas of Ukraine.

Conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank said Russia may have sent a limited force initially intended to reinforce the Pokrovsk advance to Kursk. However, these forces did not appear to have been engaged in front-line operations, and Moscow has primarily redeployed troops from the lower-priority areas of the front line instead.

“The Russian military command likely remains extremely averse to pulling combat effective units from frontline areas” in places like Pokrovsk and Toretsk, a nearby city under similar pressure, the ISW analysts wrote in a Saturday assessment.

“The redeployed units were likely reserve units that the Russian military command intended to use to reinforce the Russian grouping in these directions and stave off the threat of pre-mature operational culmination,” they added.

A former Ukrainian military officer who goes by the social media handle Tatarigami said that Ukraine would typically move forces from quieter areas of the front line to stabilize more critical areas. But the Kursk invasion has limited the number of troops available for reinforcement.

George Barros, the geospatial-intelligence team lead and a Russia analyst at ISW, said that the Kursk invasion underscores how Moscow left a major portion of its international border undefended. This leaves the Kremlin with a dilemma: does it continue to do this and risk more Ukrainian attacks, or does it move its forces to protect its borders?

“If the Kremlin goes with the latter, then that would drastically increase the resourcing requirements for Vladimir Putin to support and wage this protracted war of his indefinitely,” Barros told Business Insider, highlighting the challenges for the Russian president.

“That’s not a trivial requirement,” he said.

This combat power would either hail from Russia’s operations in Ukraine, stripping it of resources there, or Russian society, as Moscow is forced to rely on conscription or a build-up of local forces.

Russia appears to already be looking for additional volunteer forces in Kursk, according to Britain’s defense ministry, which said in an intelligence update last week that prospective recruits for this effort have been told they will serve only within that specific region on a short-term contract.

Even though the Kursk invasion may not be forcing Russia to redirect front-line forces from Pokrovsk, that campaign will eventually culminate. When it does, Barros said, Moscow will look to its forces in other areas as it pivots attention to another sector of the front line. At that point, the reshuffling of manpower could come into play.

Barros said that “the Kursk operation and the redeployment of those 30,000 troops are degrading the Russians’ ability to plan for that contingency in the future.”

But the invasion of Kursk is also challenging the narrative that the war is a stalemate and that the situation can’t improve for the Ukrainians, Barros said. This realization could prove important as the US presidential election — in which future military support for Kyiv hangs in the balance — draws closer.

Additionally, the unexpected invasion of Russia is a reminder to policymakers that the US plays an important role in the war and can influence the outcome when it comes to decisions about the rules of engagement, Barros said.

Such considerations are top concerns for Ukrainian officials, who have long pushed for the US to drop all restrictions on using American-provided weapons to strike military targets inside Russia. These efforts have intensified since the start of the Kursk invasion.