Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale offensive into Russia's Kursk region, marking the first incursion by a foreign army into Russian territory since World War II. The operation, which involved about a thousand Ukrainian soldiers, exposed the weakness of Russia's border defenses and caused panic among the Russian leadership.
Bloomberg notes that this is the first invasion of the Russian Federation by a foreign army since World War II.
This offensive “exposed the fragility of Russian border defenses” as the group grows in Ukraine.
He “boosted Ukrainian morale” and “undermined the Kremlin’s carefully constructed image of Putin as a defender of ordinary Russians.”.
“Instead, the war he started in Ukraine is now increasingly spilling over into Russian territory, where people in border regions live under constant risk of shelling and drone strikes on key industrial facilities,” the publication writes.
For Ukraine, according to Bloomberg, this will reinforce its arguments that the United States and Europe should not be afraid of Russian threats of escalation and should allow Ukraine to fight Putin in any way it deems necessary to hasten the end of the war.
Ukraine has not officially announced the objectives of the operation, so the publication lists the following versions: from an attempt to seize territory as a potential bargaining chip in future negotiations with Moscow to a diversionary tactic to ease pressure on Ukraine's stretched defenses by distracting Russian forces from the front line.
