British professor and military analyst Michael Clarke, former director of the RUSI think tank (2007–2015), explains the significance of the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region:
"I'm sure they're doing this to try to reverse the narrative that they're losing the war slowly. I mean, Ukraine's been being pushed back all around the front. It's doing quite well in the western part of the Black Sea, but nobody takes very much notice of that. They have had their successes at sea and in relation to Crimea, but in that great semi circle of the front, we're very familiar with the maps over the last couple of years, we all see that same semicircle map.
The Ukrainians have been losing territory not dramatically, but slowly. And there was this sense that the Ukrainians can't win. So they've launched this offensive to try to reverse the dynamic of that effectively, to give the Russians something to worry about, to give Putin something to worry about, and also, very importantly, to try to create such an enclave inside Russia that the Russians have got to divert troops from elsewhere on the front to deal with it, which I'm sure they will. I mean, the Russians will not settle for this. They will not allow this battle to become a battle of slow attrition. They have to push the Ukrainians out of their territories, really important, so they'll devote some of their best units from elsewhere to come and do that.
And the Ukrainians, I'm sure they hope, will get some relief elsewhere on the front if they can hold this enclave, this pocket, for a little while, a few weeks, maybe a month at most, I don't think they'll hold it for much longer than that, but we'll see."
