Putin pushes towards Ukraine’s Pokrovsk, as smaller forces defend Kursk

Russia’s border regions began to form volunteer forces to fight Ukraine’s four week-old counter-invasion in Kursk, as Moscow continued to resist any major redeployment of forces from Ukraine to defend its own territory.

Kursk governor Alexei Smirnov said last Friday that he would form a volunteer combat reserve force, and Ukrainian Kharkiv forces spokesman Vitaly Sarantsev said Russia’s Bryansk and Belgorod regions were doing the same. All three regions border Ukraine.

Sarantsev estimated the strength of the three volunteer forces at just below 5,000 soldiers.

Moscow appeared to have redeployed limited units to Kursk, as Al Jazeera reported last week, but it has mainly relied on a hotch-potch of existing border and internal security forces to defend Russia.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday told NBC that Moscow had diverted 60,000 soldiers from Ukraine to Kursk. A week earlier, his commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, put the figure at 30,000. But they have not provided details to back up these assertions, that appear at odds with what open-source intelligence suggests.

Putin downplayed the importance of the incursion during a visit to a secondary school in the Tuva region of Siberia. “We have to deal with these thugs who made it into Russia,” he told students in Kyzyl. Putin has studiously avoided launching a general mobilisation during the war.

Russian defensive efforts appeared to have slowed the Ukrainian advance. Ukraine was reported to have captured one settlement during the past week, Nizhnyaya Parovaya north of Sudzha, and Russian forces managed to recapture Ulanok, southeast of Sudzha.

Meanwhile Russian forces continued to press on towards Pokrovsk, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region which has been their focus since they seized Avdiivka in February. They have formed a 29km (18 mile) long salient stretching to the west of Avdiivka since then and are within about 8km (5 miles) of the outskirts of Pokrovsk.

During the past week, Russian forces overran Novohrodivka and entered Hrodivka, two towns east of Pokrovsk. They also claimed to be on the outskirts of Myrnohrad, a town immediately to the east of Pokrovsk.

Zelenskyy has referred to the estimated 1,300sq km (502sq miles) it has taken in Kursk as an “exchange fund”, presumably intending to swap it for Ukrainian land in a peace settlement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov quashed any such notion on Saturday during an interview with Russia Today.

“Zelenskyy said… that they will need this for future exchanges. That’s why they are taking prisoners and want to seize square kilometers,” said Lavrov. “It’s so simple-minded and naive. We do not discuss our territory with anyone. We do not negotiate about our territory.”

Putin took the same line in Tuva, saying the Kursk operation was doomed to failure, and when it did, Ukraine “will have a true desire — not in words, but in deeds — to move to peaceful negotiations”.

Zelenskyy reshuffles cabinet

Zelenskyy has said the Kursk invasion is part of his victory plan and it is achieving all of its aims.

On Tuesday night he warned of a government shake-up ahead of an autumn that will be “extremely important for Ukraine”. His top priorities included increasing weapons production, speeding up “real negotiations” with the European Union and a “special interaction” with NATO.

Two cabinet ministers were being sucked into the presidential administration to have greater influence in these areas, including Strategic Industries Minister Olexandr Kamyshin and Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

Some ministers were being shuffled laterally, and three ministerial posts that had no permanent minister – culture and information policy, agriculture and sport – will acquire one.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal remains in place for now. Ukraine’s long-serving foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, resigned and was not offered another post. He will be replaced by his deputy, career diplomat Andrii Sybiha.

Zelenskyy has previously refrained from widespread changes in personnel during the war, replacing his defence minister amid corruption allegations and his commander in chief after the disappointing 2023 counteroffensive.

Putin reshuffled his cabinet extensively after winning re-election in March.

Will the US allow long-range missile strikes in Russia?

What really exercised Russian officials was the perception that the administration of US President Joe Biden was considering expanding the permitted use of US weapons inside Russia.

“The Biden administration is obviously getting ready for more concessions to Zelensky in giving [Zelenskyy] free rein to use almost any US weapons, including for strikes inside Russia,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said last Friday.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov was in Washington on Friday, presenting a list of potential targets inside Russia to White House officials. Until now, the Biden administration has refused to allow more than counter-battery fire into Russia using US weapons.

Last week, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, identified 245 potential targets within range of the US Army Tactical Missiles System (ATACMS) already provided to Ukraine. Of these, 36 were airbases, and the rest ammunition depots, communications centres, army bases and command centres.

Reuters on Tuesday quoted unnamed US officials as saying the Biden administration could soon announce it will supply Ukraine with Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs) which are fired from F-16s. JASSM has ranges between 370km (230 miles) and 1,000km (621 miles). The source did not specify which variant of the missile would be sent. Even if the administration did approve the weapon, the missiles would take months to arrive in Ukraine, Reuters said.

Ukraine continued its policy of long-range attacks not involving US weapons.

The Russian Ministry of Defence said it had downed 158 Ukrainian drones or missiles over 16 Russian regions. Some appeared to have targeted an oil refinery outside Moscow, a power station at Kashira, 90km (56 miles) southeast of Moscow, and a special forces base in the Tula region, south of Moscow.

Russia displayed its superior firepower and industrial base, unleashing drones and missiles into Ukraine every night of the past week. Between August 29 and September 3, Russia fired into Ukraine 224 Iranian-designed Shahed drones and 43 missiles of various types. Ukraine said it downed 154 of the drones, with another 37 either crashing of their own accord or going astray into Belarus or back into Russia.

With 85 percent of the drones ineffective, the greater problem was clearly the missiles, 42 percent of which hit their mark. Not only does Russia have a far greater production capacity of missiles than Ukraine; some of the missiles that hit last week were ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea. Bloomberg quoted an unnamed European official saying Iran may begin shipping additional ballistic missiles to Russia “within days”.

Ukraine has said the only air defence systems capable of striking down ballistic missiles are the US-made Patriot and the French-Italian SAMP/T. The Biden administration has managed to scramble two Patriot systems to Ukraine from allies this year, but another five on order won’t be ready until next year.

The absence of enough such systems to protect all of Ukraine’s airspace was in evidence on Wednesday, when two Iskander ballistic missiles struck a military communications academy and a nearby medical facility in Poltava, in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 51 people and injuring 274.

Ukraine’s allies have tried to bolster its air defences by supplying F-16 fighter jets, half a dozen of which have been delivered. But one of these crashed under mysterious circumstances on August 26, Ukraine announced last Thursday, prompting Zelenskyy to fire the head of the Ukrainian Air Force on Friday.

Ukraine has offered no official explanation for the incident, but Ukrainian parliamentarian Mariana Bezuhla has publicly said this could be the third friendly fire incident of the war downing a Ukrainian plane and killing its pilot.

Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin continued his highly successful energy diplomacy during the week. During a visit to Mongolia on Monday and Tuesday, Putin said Russia had completed technical and feasibility studies to build the 960km (597-mile) Soyuz Vostok gas pipeline across Mongolia to China, which would also supply cheap gas to Mongolia. He also said Russian engineers would refurbish the Ulaanbaatar-3 thermal power plant to triple electricity production.