I doubt that Ukraine wants the hassle of taking the nuclear plant. There would be too much danger of damage to the plant or sabotage opening them to propaganda claims of Ukraine deliberately releasing radiation.
Insofar as the attack itself is going, one commentator remarked that Russia seemed to have forgotten that there are no borders between warring countries, only front lines. The Kremlin seems to have thought that Ukraine would never dare to cross that line on the maps, and there was little need for real defenses, despite all the Russian public claims of fear of attack from Ukraine and the West.
There is a limit how far Ukraine can advance into Russia without being flanked and encircled by the Russians. 800 sq km is a large area to occupy and control.
Russia is in the strange position of striking their own territory.
I’ve been looking for reports of Ukraine launching any strikes on infrastructure and military installations. HIMARS are mounted on trucks and can (temporarily) reach storage depots and command centers deeper within Russia. I haven’t seen any reports yet. Other than the normal combat damage.
It is encouraging that Ukraine is improving their leverage for negotiating a peace treaty. They hold territory that can be exchanged. Putin is saying the same thing.
Russia is faced with hard choices concerning Kursk. They can either pull more capable units off the front lines in places like Donbas, where they are at least making very expensive but incremental gains, or they commit Rosgvardia internal security forces largely made up of very ill-equipped and ill-trained conscripts, which it should be pointed out many of which hail from ‘good’ Russian families in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Casualties from these ranks have different internal political impact than the thousands of deaths of contract soldiers from the far-flung east that have been sustained since the start of the conflict.
The fact that they don’t have an armored division or two kept in reserve - not just in case of an enemy counterattack, but also to exploit a collapse of Ukrainian defenses in Donbas - is telling.
Who’s downwind of it? And is that variable? (Winds usually are.)
Ukraine may want to hold it in order to prevent Russia from turning it into a weapon (and then, most likely, claiming ‘it was an accident!’ or making such propaganda claims against Ukraine even if Russia holds the plant – claiming the problem was caused by a Ukranian drone attack or some such.)
Saw a post on mastodon in which one Anne Applebaum says there are reports of retreating Russian soldiers looting the homes of evacuees in Kursk Oblast.
“The Ukrainian actions are an evident terrorist action. No one hides the fact that American weapons have become a murder weapon of ordinary Russians. Attacks on schools, hospitals, ambulances and residential buildings in Russia cannot be recognized as a right of self-defense.”
This is indeed some of the greatest hypocrisy I have seen. It is okay when Russian attacks schools, hospitals, ambulances and residential buildings, but it is terrorism when the Ukrainians strike back.
I see Zelenskiy has pointed out (seized on?) another - perhaps entirely coincidental - psychological/political impact of attacking in this particular region: in his early months in office, Putin was much criticised for his handling of the disaster of the submarine *Kursk
I wonder if these new offensives are a way of speeding up the war of attrition on Russia. By striking in these regions, they can reduce the overall pool of Russian manpower without the danger of prepared defenses. Doing this often or large enough can possibly take battalions or maybe whole regiments out of action.
The problem with being inside Russia is that Russia can now (legally) use their conscripts to fight. This appears to be who Russia is mobilizing to fight in Kursk versus moving regular military “men” from other frontlines inside Ukraine. Surely they will have a mix, but they do appear to be relying mostly on conscripts and that is a big difference in quality.
Conversely, it does appear that Ukraine moved some of it’s best soldiers/equipment off the frontlines for this Kursk invasion.
The upside is Russian conscripts are mostly untrained kids (good chunk from St. Petersburg/Moscow) and can’t push Ukraine out of Kursk. The downside is the frontlines in Ukraine are now less defended and Russia is not letting up there. It’s a gamble for sure.
I’d think, if Ukraine is using it’s best soldiers it intends to stay in Kursk (this is no Viking raid) - Zelensky somewhat confirmed this recently (would establish “military offices” in Kursk). And if Russia relies mostly on conscripts, they’ll just dig in a new frontline inside Russia. Eventually though Ukraine will need to keep resupplying more troops in to hold it indefinitely.
**I’m saying this based on some analysts I follow, so it’s obviously not certain or anything. And I can tell I’m building a story based on fragments of assumptions.
Long-range drones of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Defense Forces carried out the largest wartime attack on Russian military airfields in Voronezh, Kursk, Savasleyka and Borisoglebsk overnight.
To me, it seems the obvious motivation for attacking Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts is logistics. If Ukraine can get a foothold in the near parts of Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov Oblasts, they will have encircled Eastern Ukraine (Donbas et al) and enclosed the Russian forces, cutting them off from Russia.
They do not have to actually gain full control of those Oblasts, just control enough of territory, which seems to be mostly non-urban near Ukraine, apart from Rostov-na-Don.
