DISINFO: Ukraine’s Kursk offensive was a successful trap set by Russia
SUMMARY
The Russians' goal isn't to seize territory; it's to destroy a potential force. The Russians didn't care about having Ukrainian troops on their territory because they believed it was more advantageous to leave them there to destroy them rather than immediately push them back. This strategy worked well, as the Ukrainians are now understaffed. Everyone who left for Kursk was missing from the front. The Ukrainians then withdrew because they needed to transfer troops to the Donbass region, where things were becoming more serious.
The very rapid Russian advance in the Kursk region is not linked to Trump's decision to cut off military intelligence services but to the dire situation facing the Ukrainian army across the entire front. Because of the ingenious trap of the Kursk offensive, the Kyiv regime is now in palliative care.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin narrative about the Ukraine’s Kursk offensive being a successful trap to eradicate Ukrainian forces.
See our article The Kursk problem - EUvsDisinfo about the Kursk advance back in August 2024, when "we continued to observe a rather mixed, if not confused, set of messages in the pro-Kremlin ecosystem trying to explain what was going on. The earlier week was dominated by surprise, shock and disbelief. The Kremlin machine has since kicked in to stem the feeling of panic".
While the full balance sheet of the 2024–2025 Kursk region offensive in terms of cost, effects, and consequences is still to be established, it is very unlikely that the Ukrainian army is now on the verge of collapse because of this operation or that it was a trap conceived by the Russian General Staff.
The counteroffensive took a relatively long time to materialise, whereas it would likely have been launched quickly if it had been a trap. Ukrainian forces had time to fortify their positions near the city of Sudzha. To repel a group of at most 30,000 troops (according to the most generous Western estimates), Russia had to deploy more than 67,000 Russian troops and 11,000 North Korean troops.
If the objective was to draw Ukrainian personnel away from the Donbas defence lines and enable faster progress on the main front, the trap was not successful, as far more Russian troops were diverted than Ukrainian, and progress on the main front remained limited. The amount of land seized monthly by Russia decreased progressively, reaching just 143 square kilometres in March 2025. The operation ultimately diverted more Russian troops from the main front than it did Ukrainian forces.
Read also related stories such as: Kursk incursion wasted 7.8 billion dollars of Western taxpayers money, or Russophobe Kaja Kallas brags about Ukraine’s war crimes in Kursk, or Ukrainian attack in Kursk area is Western operation.