CNN
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Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from occupied territory into Ukraine to counter a surprisingly successful Ukrainian offensive into Russian territory, undermining Moscow’s war effort, two senior US officials told CNN.
The development has attracted US attention and US officials are now working to determine exactly how many troops Russia is moving. An operation last week.
“It’s clear to us that Mr. Putin and the Russian military are diverting some resources, some units, to the Kursk region to openly counter what the Ukrainians are doing,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNN on Thursday.
Kirby said the move of Russian troops from Ukraine “doesn’t mean that Mr. Putin has given up military operations in the northeastern part of Ukraine or toward places like Zaporizhia to the south.” “There is still intense fighting on that front.”
But the moves have raised the tantalizing possibility that what at first appeared to be an attempt by Ukraine to humiliate Russian President Vladimir Putin could have a more significant strategic impact on the battlefield, depending on how long Ukraine can hold on to Russian territory.
The Ukrainian operation has intrigued U.S. officials, particularly the way the Ukrainian military has been able to keep its details so secret — the infiltration took U.S. officials by surprise, the officials said.
While the move risks softening some of Ukraine’s own defenses along the 600-mile front, the sources added, it could also distract Russian troops who have been making some incremental gains inside Ukraine over the summer. Ukraine says it has captured 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of Russian territory since the start of its surprise offensive, which has forced tens of thousands of Russians from their homes.
Both a senior U.S. official and a senior European intelligence official said the main goal of the move appears to be creating “strategic dilemmas” for Putin, particularly when it comes to where Russia should allocate manpower.
However, Russia is believed to have hundreds of thousands of troops in Ukraine, so diverting a few thousand would not have a big impact in the short term, officials said.
Russia also does not appear to be moving its largest and best-trained units from Ukraine to Kursk, two other sources familiar with Western intelligence said. One of those sources suggests that Russia is bolstering Kursk’s defenses primarily with untrained men drawn from elsewhere in Russia.
“We don’t see a significant move [of Russian troops] Still, we can’t say because they’re only launching moving forces, or they’re not moving forces at all,” said one of the sources familiar with US intelligence.
In addition to troops moved from inside Ukraine, Russia has also sent personnel to Russia’s Leningrad Military District and Kaliningrad to help secure Kursk from Russia, a senior U.S. official said.
While they acknowledged the limited success of the Kursk operation so far, several US and Western officials familiar with the latest intelligence warned that Ukraine could not hold the territory for long, and stressed that it was too early to determine how the operation would proceed. affect the wider outcome of the war.
Several officials said the U.S. is reluctant to allow Ukraine to use long-range, U.S.-supplied weapons inside Kursk—not because of the increased risk, but because the U.S. has a limited number of long-range missiles. As ATACMS, in addition to being delivered to Ukraine, officials said they would be best used to target Russian-occupied Crimea.
A Western official said Ukraine had sent some of its most experienced troops to Kursk, raising concerns that Russia might be building up weaknesses on its own front to gain more ground inside Ukraine.
“It’s impressive from a military point of view,” the official said of the Kursk operation. But Ukraine “dedicates pretty experienced troops to this and they can’t afford to lose those troops.”
“And distracting them from the front lines creates opportunities for Russia to seize the advantage and break,” the person added.
