What military history tells us about Ukraine’s Kursk invasion

The Ukrainian ground offensive into the southern Kursk region of Russia is as bold an operation as they come, particularly when put in the broader context of military history. 

It is difficult to know, at this point, Ukraine’s intent for this risky operation. Perhaps Kyiv aims to draw in Russian ground troops, weakening their offensive elsewhere. Perhaps it wants to drive Russian artillery northward, beyond range of Ukraine’s Sumy region. Perhaps the goal is to capture prisoners to exchange for Ukrainian soldiers held in Russia, or to hold a sliver of land before negotiations begin. Perhaps it is intended mainly as an assault on Putin’s political credibility.

But the ambiguity of the operation’s aims underscores its boldness. At least now, in Kursk proper, and in the larger political realm, Ukraine has the initiative. And in war, as military history shows, initiative is everything.

 “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace,” Gen. George Patton is said to have told his commanders: audacity, audacity, always audacity against an enemy in the field. Patton knew that through boldness he could gain and maintain the initiative against the enemy.

Military history offers three interesting cases of this kind of bold risk-taking. Two ultimately proved successful, while the third ended in failure. All three offer this critical lesson: that it is imperative to gain the initiative and to maintain it with subsequent sustainable actions.

In the fall of 1776, George Washington’s Continental Army, fighting for independence from its colonial master, Great Britain, suffered a stout defeat at the Battle of Long Island. After suffering such a demoralizing rout, most generals would have scurried off with the aim of fighting another day.

But Washington didn’t do that. Instead, he dispatched his army to press the enemy anew: south into New Jersey, where it attacked two British outposts at Princeton and Trenton. By crossing the frozen Delaware River, Washington caught the British off-guard and soundly defeated both outposts. The result proved more than a tactical defeat for the British. By taking Princeton and Trenton, the Continental Army basically cut off British outposts to the west from their main base in New York City.

Washington’s audacious move sent the British Army scurrying back to the safety of its defenses in New York. It grabbed the initiative back after the defeat on Long Island, buoying Continental Army morale and rejuvenating the patriotic cause. The new-found confidence in his army would remain, even after future losses, for the remainder of the war.

The second case is Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s amphibious landing at Inchon in September 1950. Combined U.S. forces retook the South Korean coastal city three months after the North Korean invasion had pushed Republic of Korea and U.S. forces all the way south, to the port of Busan.

In the weeks leading up to the landing, MacArthur received pushback from certain members of the U.S. military who argued that Inchon was too risky. The landing site was too far to the north on the peninsula, they said, which would make it difficult for the amphibious landing forces to link up with the planned breakout by the defenders around Busan. 

In some ways, the opposition to McArthur’s Inchon plan resembles the criticism Ukraine received in the initial days of its invasion of Kursk. The operation was too risky, skeptics argued. Ukrainian forces were already heavily committed along the frontlines with Russia, and they couldn’t afford the costs in material and manpower that the Kursk invasion would incur.

But the Inchon invasion worked. It allowed U.S. Army and Marine forces to quickly mass on the beach, followed by a quick and decisive movement west, toward Seoul, and south, toward Busan, where they linked up with the breakout operations by U.S., Republic of Korea, and British troops. In the following weeks, UN forces, under U.S. leadership, pushed the North Korean invaders back north, well past the 38th parallel that split the Korean Peninsula in two.

Then MacArthur pressed on, his forces approaching the Yalu River that marked the Chinese border. The cocksure general disregarded clear intelligence indicating that the Chinese Army was likely to enter the war to prevent UN forces from uniting the peninsula under South Korean writ.

Indeed, they did exactly that in late October 1950, crossing the Yalu and beating back the UN advance. Over the next several months, China’s People’s Volunteer Army drove UN forces south of Seoul. By spring 1951, the U.S. had launched a counteroffensive under a new commander, but could only claw back to the 38th Parallel, where the war stalemated.

For Ukraine, the lesson from MacArthur is: Don’t allow initial success from an audacious military action to generate unchecked confidence; don’t become so convinced of your proficiency that you disregard the capabilities and intentions of your enemy.

This was also the lesson that the German Army failed to learn on World War II’s Eastern Front. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in summer 1941, pressed eastward in an unstoppable tide, and by year’s end was pushing on the gates of Moscow. Then came the Red Army’s counterattack.

By early summer 1943, Soviet forces had regained enough ground to create a vulnerable salient: a bulge into the German lines in southeastern Russia, just north of the Ukrainian cities of Sumy and Kharkiv and quite near today’s Ukrainian Kursk offensive.

On July 4, the German Army launched a bold, audacious counterstroke, attacking the bulge from the north and the south with the aim of pinching the Soviets off and destroying nearly half-a-million soldiers. After about a month of heavy fighting—and the largest tank battle in the history of warfare—the German attack on Kursk stalled and failed.

 It failed largely because the German Army, at that point in the war, didn’t have the operational depth of forces to sustain their counteroffensive beyond the first few weeks. It also failed because the Germans were not fighting for the same objective as the Soviets. The Red Army’s fight was existential: a struggle for their homeland against a brutal invading force. The German Army, by comparison, fought to achieve Hitler’s rapacious goal of lebensraum, or living space for the German people. The motivations of fighting forces are not inconsequential. 

Kursk offers many lessons for the Ukrainians today. Even in the boldness of the current incursion, the Ukrainians must be ready to accept when the spread of their military forces has culminated. They will inevitably reach a point where, if they don’t shift to the defensive—either in Kursk or back in Ukraine—they risk catastrophic defeat in detail.

Russians today, and Vladmir Putin in particular, should learn from the Germans and their failure at Kursk in 1943, and ultimately the overall defeat of Germany in WWII: an enemy who defends their homeland in a fight for their existence is tough to beat. That is especially the case when that enemy applies bold, risk-taking operations that are sequenced and sustained with follow-on obtainable objectives.

These three case studies suggest that Ukraine’s audacity has created an advantage. After gaining and maintaining the initiative against the enemy, it can still win its war against the Russian invaders. 

Gian Gentile is the Associate Director at RAND’s Army Research Division.

Adam Givens is an Associate Policy Researcher at RAND.