contricusc
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Zelensky didn’t start the war. He was elected on a platform of reconciliation with Russia and trying to end the conflict. But Putin was having none of it, as he wanted to grab more land and change the regime in Kyiv, to bring back his old serfs in power and keep Ukraine as a vassal state, in the same way he keeps Belarus.
Russia didn’t need excuses to invade. They invaded because they didn’t want Ukraine to prosper as a free country and join the EU in the future. In this case, Zelensky had no choice but to rally his country to defend against the aggession.
I am not a fan of Zelensky, he has many failings, but he couldn’t avoid the war, and he certainly didn’t started it. One of his biggest failings is that he didn’t prepare enough for the war because he mistakenly though he could avoid it. Poroshenko was much more hawkish against Russia and would have been much better prepared against the invasion.
Nobody knows what was the purpose of the Kursk operation. Of course that the Ukrainians will state to the media that they did it to allievate the pressure in the Donbass, in order to look defensive in nature, but it would be silly to take their word at face value considering the situation.
It is much more likely that they did it because they saw an opening and wanted to exploit it. They were able to capture a lot of land and to take many prisoners (for future exchanges) with relatively little losses, so the operation makes perfect sense from a strategic point of view. It would have been a waste to send those troops in the defence where they can’t explot the advantage of combined arms tactics and where the front is static.
Also, the operation raises the morale of Ukrainian troops and boosts the recruiting efforts, as people are more optimistic now and many Ukrainians are inspired by the idea of taking Russian land, as opposed to fighting a defensive battle where they are on the retreat.
They have the choice to go as deep as they want and can. Nobody forces them to overextend and reach indefensible positions. They are trying to move the frontier to the Seym river, which is a very defensible line that would not require a lot of effort to sustain. My assumption is that Ukraine will take the land that it can without heavy losses, and then fortify the positions that are easier to defend. Then, they can try to exploit other gaps in Russian defenses along the long border.
Let the Russians burn through their forces on a grinding assault in the Donbass where they get very little land for very big losses, while the Ukrainians take undefended lands near the border with little losses and lots of POWs. And on top of that, this is also causing political trouble at home for Putin, as Russians will not be happy to trade 1000 sqkm in Russia for 50 sqkm in the Donbass.
