Ukraine’s daring offensive is humiliating Russia. But to what end?

For most of the year, the Ukrainian army has been in a defensive crouch across the more than 600-mile-long front line. It has been dealing with a Russian opponent whose use of glide bombs, artillery and so-called meat assaults — waves of Russian troops moving toward a position to overwhelm the defenders — has caused problems within the ranks. Beginning peace talks with Moscow, a subject many Ukrainians viewed as taboo, is now being discussed publicly as a policy option. And while the Russians haven’t picked up swaths of territory like they did in the first few months of the war, their relentless offensive in Donbas over the last several months has forced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to streamline procedures for mobilizing new men into the army.

The last week, however, has seen the tables turn. Even as the Russians continue to blast Ukrainian positions in the east of the country, at least 1,000 Ukrainian troops have executed a sneak attack across the border into Russia’s Kursk region. This isn’t the first time the Russians have had to defend small villages along the border with Ukraine. But the current attack is notable because the Ukrainians appeared to have taken Moscow by surprise. The Ukrainians have captured dozens of smaller villages in Kursk, forced Russian authorities to evacuate tens of thousands of people and caused panic in Moscow. At the time of writing, the Ukrainian offensive reached about 20 miles into Russia.

Despite the Russian Defense Ministry claiming that everything is under control, the Ukrainian thrust is another highly public humiliation for a Russian army that was generally viewed as lethal, competent and prepared before the war in Ukraine began. The situation looks mightily different today. The Russian army is certainly lethal, as Ukrainians can testify to, and yet the sheen has worn off in terms of competence; nobody monitoring the war can argue differently with a straight face. The foibles, screwups and mishaps — a failed Russian offensive in Kyiv, an embarrassing withdrawal in Kharkiv, a mercenary coup in Russia that came to within 150 miles away from Moscow, incessant hatred within the Russian army’s lower ranks for their own generals — are too many to cover in a single column.

Even so, what Russians do have is mass. Franky put, they have more of everything, which is precisely why Moscow has been able to keep this conflict going despite at one point suffering an astounding 70,000 casualties over two months. Whereas the Ukrainians have the motivation and the tactical skill, the Russians have the bodies and lead. And therein lies the main issue for the Ukrainian government: How can it prevail facing an adversary with such materiel advantages?

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