According to the NYT, citing Western officials and military experts, the reason that the Russian Federation has not yet been able to repel the country’s largest foreign invasion since the Second World War is not only a lack of personnel and intelligence but also a lack of priority.
Although the Kursk offensive caught the Russian Federation off guard, it still intends to capture Pokrovsk, a city that serves as a key logistics hub in the eastern Donbas, and Russian leadership is reluctant to withdraw troops from this section of the front. “The goal of the Russian summer offensive is at least the capture of Pokrovsk,” military experts note.
It is noted that the Russian troops in Kursk had “neither the numbers nor the experience” to quickly organize a defense when Ukrainian troops quickly crossed the border on August 6. Today, Ukrainian forces already control about 100 settlements in the Kursk region and control 1,300 square kilometers of Russian land.