Ukraine’s push into Russia did wonders for morale. But will it change the war?

The yellow fields of Ukrainian corn abruptly give way to the yellow fields of Russian corn.

A well-guarded Ukrainian checkpoint marks the geographical border, but formalities are impossible on the Russian side. The buildings that once housed the passport control and customs offices lie in ruins. 

Ukraine’s swift occupation of large swaths of Russia’s Kursk region last month surprised the world and gave the battered nation cause for pride after months of bad news from the battlefield.

“Now the Russians know that we can attack them in any position,” says Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi, in Sudzha. But “the Ukrainian army needs a lot of forces to hold on here,” he acknowledges.  

History will judge whether this bold, cross-border gambit will pay off in the long run. For now, the immediate challenge is administering territory that Ukraine says it plans to occupy only temporarily.

One month into Ukraine’s military occupation of Russian lands, the center of Sudzha shows limited signs of life aside from a few older cyclists. Smoke drifts lazily from the charred carcass of a brick administrative building across the street from the Russian military draft office, which is now a pile of blue-and-gray rubble.

The mangled remains of a statue of Vladimir Lenin stand nearby, the pedestal covered with large photographs of the destruction wreaked on Ukrainian cities since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Fresh flowers adorn a nearby World War II memorial. With the tables turned, occupying Ukrainians find themselves making their case to local residents who remain in Sudzha.

“When civilians lament the level of destruction here, we show them these pictures of what has happened to Ukrainian cities,” says military spokesperson Col. Vadym Mysnyk, leading a pack of journalists on a cross-border tour. Their feet crunch across broken glass and debris, and armored vehicles stand by for quick evacuation. 

“But we try not to destroy anything, not even the memorial plaques in honor of Russian soldiers killed fighting this war,” he adds. “These are their memories. Sooner or later, we will leave this territory, and they will decide what to do with it.”

Ukrainian forces, he stresses, are making provision of food and medicine to local residents their top priority. Then come efforts to show the local population that Ukrainians are not the monsters of Russian propaganda. “They think we are Nazis or devils with horns,” Colonel Mysnyk says.

Ukrainians expected to stay “a long time”

A crowd of Russian men gathers outside an abandoned orphanage now being used as a shelter for around 40 civilians. A pile of wooden planks lies by the entrance; the windows need protecting from Russian drone and missile strikes, which still threaten the town.

“Nobody was prepared for this,” says Oleg, a skinny handyman with a black ponytail. Like others interviewed, he gave only one name. “It was a complete surprise.”

He knows it all really started in 2014. That was the year Russia annexed parts of Ukraine. Now that the situation is reversed, Oleg is resigned to the fact that Sudzha will be a front-line town – without electricity or the materials needed to rebuild. In the face of uncertainty, he trusts no one and avoids expressing an opinion on either Russia or Ukraine.

“We expect these territories to become a gray zone and Ukrainians to stay here a long time,” he finally volunteers. “We hope that common sense will prevail over this absurdity. The experience is surreal. The grannies here have absolutely no clue what is going on.”

Most of the residents sheltered inside the orphanage are advanced in age. Some lie in bed, weighed down by illness and sorrow, barely able to care for themselves. Others are in better physical shape, but homeless. “There is no sense in staying, no future here,” says Zoya, whose home was destroyed by a Russian missile after the Ukrainians took over the town.

She hopes to be evacuated to Ukraine along with her granddaughter, who is due to finish high school. “It’s been a month, and my nerves have been on edge since Day 1,” she says, sitting on her neatly made bed.

Colonel Mysnyk says the Ukrainian military is ready to evacuate civilians either to Ukraine or to Russia as soon as the order is given. But so far, efforts to engage Moscow in negotiations to open a humanitarian corridor to Russia have been fruitless.

Also in limbo are approximately 400 prisoners of war who are now being held at various detention facilities in the border region of Sumy, in Ukraine. The Christian Science Monitor visited one site holding some 60 men, including six Russian border guard officers and dozens of young conscripts with little fighting experience.

One of those detainees is Denis. The Russian junior sergeant says he was still undergoing training when he was deployed to the Kursk region with orders to neutralize a small group of Ukrainian insurgents. “We were not told it was a full-scale offensive operation,” he says.

“In a nutshell, the Russian army completely failed strategically and organizationally; the Ukrainian army advanced very quickly,” he adds.

Is operation about more than morale?

In military terms, the Kursk operation has brought some tangible benefits beyond morale-boosting optics, Ukrainian analysts say, but it has not necessarily changed the course of the war.

It created a buffer zone and lowered the risk of attacks on the border region of Sumy, where air raid sirens sound day and night. It destroyed road and rail junctions, disrupting Russian supply lines. And it gave Ukraine control of Sudzha, a key transit point for Russian gas exports to Europe, an important card in future negotiations, says Ukrainian analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko.

“We have proven that Ukraine can conduct military operations in Russian territory and that the red lines the Western community is afraid of do not exist,” adds Mr. Kovalenko.

“One of the goals of this operation is to create proper conditions for a larger Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2025 and territorial swaps in the near future,” he says.

But in the meantime, Russian forces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine have been making steady advances toward the strategically important city of Pokrovsk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insists that the Kursk operation is achieving all its aims. And Ukrainians in uniform – from the top military brass to the lowest-ranking soldier – are resolute in their belief that victory against Russia is both possible and necessary.

The operation has “demonstrated the resilience and surprise capabilities that define the Ukrainian army,” says Guillaume Lasconjarias, a military affairs expert who teaches at Sorbonne University in Paris. Tactically, it has reduced the area from which Russia can launch missiles against Ukraine and “restored hope” at a time when “military aid is again a question mark.”

But it is still difficult to judge what Ukraine has truly gained.

“Has there been a real movement of Russian troops ... to plug the gaps in the north?” Dr. Lansconjarias asks. “Has this permanently slowed the advances in the Donbas? Probably not.”