WHAT WILL THE EXIT CONDITIONS BE?

Last February, characters in a Tom Clancy novel were in a better place.

Early in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I asked, "Might there still be a compromise in the Tom Clancy style available?"  A year into the trench warfare, the Tom Clancy outcome still looked better than what the peaceniks were contemplating.  "In Command Authority, the Russians gained Crimea and everything east of Mariupol, with relatively little loss of life.  The territorial outcome Mr Gerson advocates is similar, only with the puppet oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk picked over and destitute."

That post concluded, "Whether the western, more Catholic bits of Ukraine west of the Dnieper will eventually become a separate state, part of the European Union, and potentially part of a future Atlantic Alliance remains to be seen."

Then summer came, and with it a reprise of Fall Zitadelle.

Let's see if we can make any sense out of the Second Battle of Kursk.

The well-attended 1943 Battle of Kursk was the biggest tank battle in history, one that will never be eclipsed. On Hitler's orders, three-quarters of a million German troops attacked nearly two million Soviet soldiers dug into three defensive lines around the city of Kursk. During the attack (including 3,200 German tanks) and resulting counterattack (with 7,400 Soviet tanks), the offensive heart was cut out of the Nazi war machine.

In the Second Battle of Kursk*, several battalions' worth of Ukraine Army (UA) forces (very rough estimate, maybe 2,000-3,000 soldiers), using drones for airpower, achieved operational surprise and overran Russian conscript troops defending the border at the Kursk Oblast (region). Moscow brought in more experienced units and even individual soldiers — likely from the scenes of the main fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine — and UA advances have dramatically slowed.

(*I doubt anyone will ever call this the Second Battle of Kursk. I'm just having some fun with it.)

Sometimes you have to be a little silly if only to keep from screaming.  Outside the Beltway's James Joyner, who has War College experience, cites reporting from establishment media sources and summarizes.

lt’s too early to get excited by a reversal in fortunes. The basic math of the conflict hasn’t changed, after all: Russia still vastly outmans Ukraine.

Still, that they’ve finally taken the fight into Russia proper rather than absorbing all of the damage at home is a welcome sign. Whether this is because they had been held back by the Biden administration or whether they didn’t believe themselves ready before now is hard to know.

Reason's Paul Schwennesen suggested the Kursk campaign might have ended the war, irrespective of what machinations the Atlantic Alliance or the presidents of these United States were up to.  "A front-line report from the Kursk offensive reveals that in the battle for hearts and minds, Ukraine’s resolve outpaces Russia’s crumbling morale, signaling an inevitable conclusion."  His sense was that the Ukrainians he met were prepared to keep on battling, while the Russians, mostly civilians, were well beyond nichevo in their lack of enthusiasm.

That might have contributed to Tsar Vladimir bringing in the Hessians North Koreans.

North Korean soldiers are starting to sustain heavy losses against Ukrainian troops fighting in Russia’s Kursk region as the Kremlin intensifies its campaign to regain control of the lost territory.

At least 30 North Korean soldiers were killed in three assaults on three villages in the region in the past two days, Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, known as HUR, said on Facebook on Monday.

In a separate post on Saturday, HUR said the language barrier between soldiers remains an obstacle with a friendly fire incident between Koreans and Chechen troops killing eight. The statements couldn’t be independently verified.

The assessment offers a rare glimpse into an increasingly fierce fighting in the area that borders Ukraine and was seized by its forces in a surprise offensive in August. Russia has deployed about 11,000 Korean servicemen on its territory, mainly in or around the Kursk region.

Moscow’s efforts have intensified in recent months, with Ukraine’s General Staff saying in its frontline update on Monday that 38 attacks had been repelled by Ukrainian troops in the region over the past day.

North Korean troops are key for Russia, providing a steady supply of manpower since their deployment in October. Ukrainian and western officials have described their appearance on the battlefield as a major escalation by Moscow.

Sending mercenaries into battle without proper support can have unintended consequences.

Prominent Ukrainian military watcher Yury Butusov said on Sunday that two Ukrainian assault brigades based near Sudzha, the largest town captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region, repelled a massive attack by North Korean troops operating with fire support from Russian army.

The troops suffered huge losses as they advanced without stopping or evacuating their wounded, he said. The tactics were reminiscent of the so-called “human waves” used by Pyongyang during the Korean War in early 1950s, he added. His claims couldn’t be independently verified.

Accordingly, North Korean troops are fighting in the highly contested area without the protection of armored vehicles, said Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian Center for Counter Propaganda, in a Telegram post on Monday. They are “used to storm narrow areas from several directions simultaneously,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signaled previously that the capture of the Kursk region was part of Kyiv’s plans to force Russia into peace talks.

And so it has.  The Kursk salient holds.

Ukraine has dealt a significant blow to Putin's army in Kursk as the battle continues to escalate in Russia's border region. Kyiv's forces managed to capture nearly 1,400 square kilometres of the Kursk region in a swift summer raid that left the Kremlin reeling.

Despite Putin's order for his generals to reclaim the territory by February and the deployment of an approximately 60,000-strong army, including some 10,000 North Koreans, Ukraine's forces continue to hold their ground. Despite being heavily outnumbered and outgunned, they have inflicted severe casualties on the Russian counterattack.

After the embarrassment of Russian troops withdrawing from Syria, recent days have seen at least ninety Russian armoured vehicles destroyed by Kyiv's army, along with thousands of soldiers killed or wounded and many taken prisoner. The Russians were defeated after attempting to force a breakthrough in an area stretching between Tolstyi Lug, Zelenyi Shlyakh, and Nizhnii Klin.

Repeated attempts by Russian mechanised units to breach heavily fortified Ukrainian positions were thwarted. The Ukrainians had prepared for the attack, laying extensive minefields and erecting anti-tank dragon's teeth.///Geolocated images from the battle show some Russian armoured vehicles foundering on the dragon's teeth and subsequently being picked off by Ukrainian forces. Others were caught in the open and swiftly destroyed by a combination of Javelin missiles, artillery strikes, and FPV drone attacks, reports the Express.

A Ukrainian Marine Corps drone operator known as Kriegsforscher has reported tallying at least ninety ruined and forsaken Russian armoured units in his area of operations, while Ukraine's forces shared images of a multitude of captive Russian troops taken during intense combat. Ukrainian military leaders have disclosed hefty casualties among North Korean fighters reportedly allied with Russian forces, stating about 30 were either killed or injured, and three remain unaccounted for following skirmishes near the frontier.

Although James Joyner recently noted "The bad guys are having a bad week," he, also, is not sure what the exit conditions will be.

For most of the war, I have struggled to envision an endstate. At its outset, pretty much everyone, myself included, expected Russia to roll to easy victory. Ukraine’s fierce resistance quickly punctured that notion, made possible through the combination of years of training by the US and other NATO countries, huge material and intelligence support, and admirable grit in the face of horror on the part of the Ukrainian people. Yet, both sides had established maximalist gains that the losses of the war have only served to reinforce.

Trump has given every indication that U.S. support will dry up under his watch. We’ll see if our European allies can fill the breach. For now, at least, the Ukranians can revel in good news.

But even if an armistice, which might be a more (the Koreas) or less (Austria) permanent partition, which is to say, the Tom Clancy outcome, follows the inauguration of a new president and the art of the deal, what will follow?  Discourse's John Mueller has thoughts.

Although there are no guarantees, a partition and ceasefire could lead to the end of an infinitely stupid war that promises years (or even decades) of fruitless and essentially winnerless destruction of depopulated Ukrainian territory.

A ceasefire under the current boundaries would require Ukraine to give up about 18% of its pre-2014 territory, at least for the time being. However, it would essentially leave the country free to cure its internal ills, such as corruption, which currently hamper both its economic growth and its drive to join the West. At the same time, it would give the war’s author, Vladimir Putin, a face-saving way to exit his foolish adventure, which has cost his country dearly and earned widespread global condemnation.

Moreover, if the ceasefire leads to decades of peace, it seems possible that Ukraine and Russia, as they continue uneasily to negotiate the partition issue, could gradually establish a relatively comfortable co-existence resembling the ones embraced by the U.S. and Canada or by Germany and Austria—examples Putin put forward as models a few months before the war. Even in Korea, where intensely hostile local regimes have glowered at each other for decades, there have been occasional periods of “sunshine.”

International relations, to crib another Tom Clancy line, are nations screwing each other.  At this point, Mr Mueller seems to suggest, over what?

Ukraine is likely better off without the areas currently occupied by Russia. Crimea and the Donbas area were a drain on Kyiv even before the Russian incursions, and the situation in Crimea is probably even worse now than it was in 2014 because it no longer appeals to well-heeled tourists from Europe. And much of the rest of the territory captured by Russia, from which over half the population has fled, is something of a rubble heap.

In addition, a lingering ceasefire would give the bulk of Ukraine a chance (and a spur) to work quietly on its problems of corruption and economic stagnation that currently hamper its efforts to join the West. Moreover, dealing with these pathologies is likely to be helpful and perhaps necessary to persuade many of those who have fled to the West to return.

How much of that is common-room wishful thinking, and how much is Realpolitik, is yet to be seen.  Crimea was Russian until Nikita Khrushchev rearranged internal boundaries among the united socialist republics, and those eastern Ukrainian areas were Orthodox and Russian back to the days of the Vikings.