Almost a month ago, on August 6, Ukraine launched a major incursion into the Russian border region of Kursk. Despite initial advances, this offensive was doomed to fail. Indeed, there was something of a kamikaze attack about it, as some observers, this one included, pointed out at the time.

Fielding brigades of its most experienced and best equipped troops for an assault that had nowhere to go and could not possibly draw on sufficient reserves, Vladimir Zelensky’s regime did not simply gamble but invite certain defeat. In the process, it weakened its own defenses against steady and accelerating Russian advances on other parts of the front line. It also irritated its Western sponsors, who – on the whole – were perplexed by this waste of scarce Ukrainian resources that in many cases were actually foreign resources.

It is true that Ukraine has managed to inflict suffering and damage, especially on civilians. Kiev’s probable aim of reaching the Kursk nuclear power station to execute some kind of blackmail scheme has, however, not been realized. That the ‘Kursk Kamikaze’ was going to fail was clear from the beginning. This failure is not the same as Russia finally liquidating this temporary occupation of a minuscule percentage (0.0058823529%) of its territory. While that moment is still in the future, the cost of the Kursk incursion for Ukraine is already rising, day by day and relentlessly.

Three key aspects of this ongoing failure are especially important: First, according to Zelensky regime key cadre Mikhail Podoliak, the aim of the Kursk operation was to compel Moscow to negotiate an end to the conflict on Ukrainian conditions. He also implied that Kiev was occupying Russian territory for a later swap. Given Russia’s military capabilities and reserves, that was always a bizarrely unrealistic idea. But it has not simply failed to come true; instead, the Kursk Kamikaze has produced the opposite: a further hardening of Moscow’s position.

President Vladimir Putin has reiterated Russia’s longstanding position, namely that it is principally ready for negotiations. Yet he has also made clear that they cannot begin before the elimination of the Kursk incursion. While Western information war narratives desperately try to........

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