By FLAVIO AGUIAR
The Battle of Kursk 81 years ago casts a dark shadow over Kiev's initiative
Former British diplomat and secret agent Alastair Crooke has published a scathing article following the invasion of the Kursk region in Russia by Ukrainian troops. on the website Strategic Culture.
I say “from” because Alastair Crooke’s analysis goes far beyond the fact itself, on the battlefield. From this, he addresses another battlefield, which he claims is more important than the first: that of the narratives created and imposed on the reading/viewing public, at different levels, by governments and the media.
First, let us characterize the analyst, because Alastair Crooke is not just any character. Today, at 75 years old, Alastair Crooke was born in Ireland. He worked in the British financial system until he joined the British secret service, MI6, where he remained for more than 30 years, under the guise of being a diplomat. He worked in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Colombia, Pakistan and the Middle East. He then became a diplomat within the European Union. Among his duties, he played a key role in obtaining weapons for the jihadists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
In the Middle East, as one of the European Union's envoys, he worked from the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, seeking to build bridges between Islamic groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and the Israeli forces, with whom, it is said, he had a good relationship.
After being awarded the Order of St. Michael and St. George by the British government in 2004, he settled in Beirut. He founded and runs the website Conflicts Forum, where he advocates efforts to bring the Islamic world and the West closer together. He claims to be censored on platforms such as Facebook and other Western platforms, accused of “playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands,” which he denies. I do not know, and it is not my place to discuss, the personal motivations behind his labyrinthine trajectory, of which I have only given a very brief summary. What is interesting is his analysis of the situation of the two wars between Russia and Ukraine, from the battlefield itself and from the world of narrative and information.
The main thesis underlying Alastair Crooke’s article is that it was not Ukraine that invaded Kursk, but NATO through Ukraine. This thesis parallels the thesis that the war in Ukraine, from the Western perspective, is a “proxy war”, a “third-party war” between the United States and its allies, and Russia. The other thesis is that the objective of the invasion was as much to advance on Russian territory as — or more — to create a new narrative globule that would animate a dispute that was being lost by the West in the symbolic field.
From here I develop my own reasoning, although supported by the broader information than mine contained in Alastair Crooke's article, which can be verified by reading it.
This war has always been driven by the United States government, NATO, its geopolitical allies (the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, the four other countries in the Five Sisters group and some annexed countries) and the co-opted or conniving media in order to create a pro-Ukraine narrative.
It should be presented not only as deserving of victory, like David against Goliath, but as the winner from the start. It should be presented as Russia on its knees before economic sanctions, and Putin as on the verge of political and personal collapse (the complicit media was flooded with stories alluding to his illnesses). The overwhelming majority of the Western media bought and sold this perspective, just as they had bought and sold, in the past, the false thesis of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons in Iraq.
It didn’t work. Despite some initial setbacks, the invasion consolidated Russian control over large areas of Donbass. Economic sanctions hurt NATO’s European wards more than they hurt Russia itself. Putin neither wavered nor faltered. On the contrary, Western pressure drove him into the arms of China, which welcomed him, gaining in return the support of one of the world’s two largest nuclear weapons arsenals.
On the battlefield, the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023 failed. Despite the titanic efforts of the Western mainstream media, which touted supposed Ukrainian advantages, these proved to be increasingly unrealistic and inconsistent. The confidence of Western allies, the United States and NATO, began to wane. The pressure on Russia proved to be a moral backfire: rising inflation in Europe, deindustrialization in Germany, skyrocketing energy prices with the cutoff of Russian supplies, much more expensive food, pharmaceuticals and agricultural inputs… recession!
Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian targets, including Moscow, were like mosquito bites on an elephant. They were annoying, but they did not pierce the enemy's skin. To revive the fighting spirit in the media, among allies and in warmongering public opinion, something new and unusual was needed. And it came: the surprising invasion of Kursk.
From what little we can gather in a war where accurate information is scarce, no major military objectives have been achieved. Russian forces have not moved from the Ukrainian Donbass to reinforce the defenses in Kursk. The region's nuclear power plant, which could have been an interesting target, remains in Russian hands. The regional capital is the same. Despite being taken by surprise, Vladimir Putin has not wavered or trembled. And he promises more than the recovery of the occupied territory: he promises revenge.
On the rhetorical level, however, the situation is different. The weakened government in Kiev has demonstrated its power of initiative. In the mainstream media, Russia and Vladimir Putin have been “cornered.” A wave of support has been created to revive the willingness of already recalcitrant allies to support militarily and financially the bottomless pit that the government in Kiev is increasingly appearing to be.
Will it work? It depends. Perhaps a historical parallel will help us decipher hypothetical answers to this question. And here another dimension of the Kursk attack stands out: the symbolic one.
Kursk was the site of the decisive battle on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. It was there that the conflict was decided more than at Stalingrad, more than at Normandy.
The battle lasted from early July to late August 1943. According to several experts, it was the largest battle in human history. Others, more modestly, define it as one of the greatest battles. In any case, everyone describes it as the largest tank battle that has ever taken place in the world.
In total, more than ten thousand armored vehicles were used in the battle, half of which were damaged or destroyed. Human losses exceeded one million, as far as can be estimated, since the data is imprecise, especially on the German side, which falsified its figures. Soviet losses were enormous, but the victory was overwhelming.
The German army took the initiative. Kursk was what is militarily called a “salient”: a Soviet enclave in the middle of territory held by the enemy. The German offensive aimed to annihilate this enclave.
Politically, Hitler's objective was similar to that of NATO/Kiev: to resume the offensive after the failure of Stalingrad, to demonstrate to the allies that the Wehrmacht was still capable of taking the initiative, whether these allies were Japan and Italy, or their sympathizers in the annexed territories, such as Austria, or occupied territories, such as Croatia, Romania and... Ukraine, among others.
Nothing worked. The enclave resisted until reinforcements arrived. The Nazis had to retreat, and from then on, on the Eastern Front, the initiative fell to the Red Army, until the capture of Berlin, almost two years later.
Two external factors helped the Soviets. Faced with the hesitation of some of his generals, Hitler decided to delay the attack on the enclave. Another factor in his decision was the desire for the new armored vehicles manufactured in Germany, technically superior to the old and Soviet ones, to reach the front. Curiously, this technical superiority, which would have been an advantage for the Germans, proved to be counterproductive, as was the case in the aviation sector. The innovative changes to the vehicles made it difficult to manufacture spare parts. Meanwhile, the Soviets continued to produce the same T-34 tanks as always, with minor modifications, especially in the gun turret, giving them greater versatility.
The second advantage came from the Western Allies. At the same time that the Wehrmacht began its attack on the Soviet enclave, the latter, after defeating the Germans in North Africa, landed in Sicily, creating the Southern Front in Europe. Hitler was forced to order the transfer of troops from the Eastern Front to the Italian peninsula, further weakening the defeated German army in the face of the Soviet advance.
The Battle of Kursk 81 years ago casts a dark shadow over Kiev's initiative. The parallel is clear, with Ukrainian forces carrying, among other things, German weaponry and many of their soldiers adorning their uniforms with Nazi trinkets.
Rather than putting a sword in Vladimir Putin's chest, the Kursk invasion may have put a thorn in the heart of Russian patriotism, which could prove fatal for Kiev.
PS – It is unnecessary but pertinent to remember that the author of these lines does not have the slightest sympathy for Vladimir Putin, nor for the invasion of Ukraine. But he also has no enthusiasm whatsoever for this stupid war, much less for NATO, nor for its puppet in Kiev, nor for the neo-Nazis who infest the Ukrainian armed forces. Except on very rare occasions, and this is not one of them, a negotiating table is always better than a battlefield.
* Flavio Aguiar, journalist and writer, is a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/48UDikx]
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