Some Western supporters of Ukraine have been presenting the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian province of Kursk as a great victory that will significantly change the course and outcome of the war. They are deceiving themselves. While legally and morally justified, the attack has failed in all its main objectives, and may indeed turn out to have done serious damage to Ukraine’s position on the battlefield. One U.S. analyst has compared it to the Confederate invasion of the North that led to the battle of Gettysburg — a brilliant tactical stroke that however ended in losses that crippled the Army of Northern Virginia.

The Ukrainian attack has not captured any significant Russian population center or transport hub. It has embarrassed Putin, but there is no evidence that it has significantly shaken his hold on power in Russia. It may have done something to raise the spirits of the Ukrainian population in general; but, as Western reports from eastern Ukraine make clear, it has done nothing to raise the morale of Ukrainian troops there.

Understandably, they are focused on the situation on their own front; and that situation is deteriorating sharply, in part it seems because many of Ukraine’s best units were diverted to the attack on Kursk, and new Ukrainian conscripts are inadequately trained and poorly motivated.

"One of the objectives of the offensive operation in the Kursk direction was to divert significant enemy forces from other directions, primarily from the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions,” Ukrainian commander in chief General Alexander Syrsky said.

In fact, precisely the opposite seems to have happened; and this is leading to intensified criticism both of President Zelensky and the Ukrainian high command from ordinary soldiers and citizens.

The Russian army is advancing rapidly towards the key Ukrainian logistics hub of Pokrovsk. In the words of one of the Ukrainian defenders: “For a long time, the situation in Donbas was aptly described as ‘difficult, but controlled.’ However, now it is out of control. Currently, it looks like our front in Donbas has collapsed.”

If or when Pokrovsk falls, it will mean that Russia controls almost all of the southern Donbas, and could strike either north, against the remaining Ukrainian positions in northern Donetsk province, or east, with a view to rolling up the entire Ukrainian southern front.

There is now no prospect that even with Western military supplies, Ukraine can inflict a crushing defeat on Russia and recover its lost territories by force. There is a danger of Ukrainian military collapse, which might lead to pressure in the West for direct intervention. This is one thing that the Russian government's signaled change to its nuclear doctrine is intended to deter.

Present Russian nuclear doctrine states that nuclear weapons will be employed in response to a nuclear attack on Russia, or a conventional attack that “threatens the existence of the state.” In the words of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov;

“[T]here is a clear intent to introduce a correction [to the nuclear doctrine], caused, among other things, by the examination and analysis of development of recent conflicts, including, of course, everything connected to our Western adversaries' escalation course in regards to the special military operation."

If a direct NATO intervention in Ukraine led to Russian defeat there, it would certainly threaten the survival of the present Russian government, and usher in a period of profound national instability and weakness, conceivably even leading to the disintegration of the Russian Federation. There is little reason to doubt that, faced with this threat, Russia would indeed escalate towards the use of nuclear weapons, albeit initially on only a limited and local scale.

Ryabkov’s statement is also of course intended to deter the U.S. and NATO from bowing to pressure from Kyiv and some NATO governments and politicians and allowing Ukraine to use the new NATO-supplied long-range missiles and F-16 warplanes to strike targets deep inside Russia. It is not that such attacks would provoke Russian nuclear retaliation; but if successful, it is easy to predict that Russia would hit back at the West through sabotage of European infrastructure. Russians believe the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has given them a moral and legal right to do this.

Such sabotage operations appear already to........

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