Ukraine’s Offensive Changes the Game in Russia-Ukraine War: Military Expert

And to discuss the latest in the Russian-Ukraine war, we're joined by Curvin Okwin, former lead intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance coordinator for the U.S. Army and host of the podcast This Week Explained. Curvin, it's great to have you again. Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region is still underway. What do we know about it so far? Well, first, thank you for having me on to talk about this. This is a very significant event. It really has changed the game in the war right now. We know very little about why Ukraine did this, but there are multiple analysts who are saying the region that they hit, the Kursk region, especially the Sochi area, is part of the Gazprom natural gas pipeline that really flows through Ukraine to get into Europe. So there are some suggestions that Ukraine wants to take control of that to get it away from Russia, because they are quite upset that Russia is getting a lot of money, multiple billions of dollars off of that natural gas storage that's right there. The other big reason is they want to take the fight to Putin, to Russia. This is the first time that the Ukrainian military has brought the fight to the Russian people. I get they were feeling it in their pocketbooks, but now it is on their doorsteps. And that is a pain for Putin right now. So Ukraine has taken the fight. They have seen that Western Europe and the United States has sort of slowed down all of this funding for the war, giving weapons and munitions to Ukraine. And they want to put it back into the spotlight with everything that's going on with Israel taking over the spotlight in normal daily news. Ukraine wants that back so that they can bring light to what's going on in their country. And Russian President Vladimir Putin called this attack a major provocation. Given that, how might Russia respond? There's a few ways that Russia can respond right now. They are sending in reinforcements. I think that's a miscalculation at this point. They're playing into Ukraine's hands. It's exactly what the Ukrainian military wants, is to stretch the Russian forces, move them away from Kherson and Luhansk, those kind of areas, so that Ukraine can then push their forces into those and retake that land. Now, the other thing is that Russia is saying constantly that there's a red line. So we saw the HIMARS, the Patriot missiles, those are red lines for Russia. They didn't do anything. The F-16s now are flying over Ukraine. Russia called that a red line. Nothing happened to that. Russia is on the cusp of calling this a red line because Ukraine has moved into Russian territory. So it still remains to be seen what they can actually do. The White House said it wasn't told about this incursion in advance. Is that consistent with other major military operations by Ukrainian forces? Not every single one. So if Ukraine is using U.S. military weapons that were given to them by the Biden administration, they would have to tell the U.S. that they are going to use them. As far as this incursion into Russia, this was so close hold that I don't even suspect the troops that actually participated in this knew what was happening until the moment it happened. There were fears within the Ukrainian military that word would get out and that Russia would then counter that offensive. They would go, instead of reacting, they'd be proactive about it. There were a lot of worries about that. And that's why Ukraine wouldn't tell much of any of their Western allies. But I do think that people, that high-level Pentagon officials, high-level other allies within Western Europe did know about this and just kept it very, very classified. And why do you think that was? Well, first of all, Ukraine has got... I'm sorry, what was that? Why do you think that was, if that was indeed the case? Well, yeah, this had to work. So from just a morale standpoint with the troops in Ukraine, this offensive into Russia had to work for them. Had it failed, that would be a disaster. And Zelensky came out just a month ago asking for even Russia to come to the table to do a peace deal. If this offensive failed, so that peace deal becomes pro-Russia, those occupied regions within Ukraine, there's no way that Ukraine can get that back. If it failed, it became a success. And so now they've taken the fight to Putin. They have much more leverage in any future peace negotiations. Russia repelled Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region and Belgorod region in 2023. How does the current incursion by Ukraine into Russia compare to the previous one? Well, this is far better planning from the Ukrainians. They did a better job pushing back the Russian forces. And Russia sending in reinforcements hasn't done anything to repel the Ukrainian forces. So we are seeing Ukraine stand their ground. Just recently, they struck a column of Russian military that were actually being placed to come in for reinforcements. They struck those individuals, some people saying with HIMARS that were given by the U.S. That still remains to be seen. But they're repelling the Russian attacks that are coming towards them. So this is a much more significant offensive than what we saw in previous tries by the Ukrainian military. And just in closing here, Kervin, what should we be watching for as this incursion unfolds? Well, for sure, we've got to see what Putin's going to keep saying publicly, what the response is going to be, because there will be a Russian response. That response will probably be on the people of Ukraine. We already saw that missile strike that possibly hit a mall and killed civilians within Ukraine. That's just the start. So we really need to be looking for what Putin is saying publicly, also getting intel for what's going on behind the scenes and what the actual Russian military is saying. I'd also be looking at what the Russian people are saying. So for the most part, about 80 percent of the Russian population was in favor of this special military operation. It'll be interesting to see where those figures move, if more and more Russians are opposed to this conflict, and if that does anything to Putin to make him change his plans. All right, Kervin Oakwin, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you very much.