By Jonathan Landay
BETHESDA, Maryland (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will launch a counteroffensive to retake territory captured by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, but Russian forces will face “a difficult battle,” deputy CIA director David Cohen said on Wednesday.
Cohen told a national security industry conference that the scale of the Ukrainian incursion, which covers some 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) of the Russian province, is still unclear.
On August 6, Ukrainian forces broke through Russia's western border into the Kursk region, a surprise offensive that continues to this day.
While Kiev has indicated it has no intention of annexing the captured territory, Ukrainian forces are building defenses and appear to plan to “retain some of that territory for a period of time,” Cohen told the Intelligence and National Security Summit.
“We can be sure that Putin will launch a counteroffensive to regain that territory,” Cohen said. “I think we expect that to be a difficult fight for the Russians.”
Putin, he said, “will not only have to face the fact that there is now a front line on Russian territory that he has to deal with, but he will also have to deal with the impact that this has on his own society, namely that they have lost a piece of Russian territory.”
Ukraine's success in Kursk “may somewhat change the dynamics of the conflict in the future,” he continued, without elaborating.
Ukraine claims to have captured 100 settlements in its invasion of Russia's Kursk region, as Russian forces advance further into the eastern Donetsk region.
Cohen said Russia achieved these gains “at extraordinary cost” in troops and equipment and that it “may or may not” capture Ukraine's key logistics hub, the city of Pokrovsk.
“But ultimately, none of this changes the situation for the Russians on a strategic level,” he continued.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the war with Russia would ultimately end in dialogue, but that Kiev needed to be in a strong position and that he would present a plan to US President Joe Biden and his two potential successors.
Putin has said that any deal must begin with Ukraine accepting the “realities on the ground,” which would give Russia large parts of four Ukrainian regions as well as Crimea.
Ukraine says it controls more than 1,200 square kilometers (463 square miles) of the Kursk region.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Franklin Paul and Jonathan Oatis)
