Revealed: Ukraine’s plan to force Putin to retreat in shame

Exclusive: Ukraine’s top adviser to president Volodymyr Zelensky tells Tom Watling that Western partners knew about their incursion into the Russian Kursk region and details why Moscow must be bullied into a peace negotiation

Ukraine’s surprise attack inside Russia is the only way to force Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table as part of a “psychological” tactic to win the war, president Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief adviser has told The Independent.

In its most successful move of the two-and-a-half-year conflict, Kyiv has captured more Russian land in the past seven days than Moscow has taken in Ukraine all year.

Ukrainian forces have steadily advanced across the border into the Kursk region, taking over towns and villages and forcing hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians to flee their homes.

Mykhailo Podolyak, the top aide to the Ukrainian president, said the incursion had shown Russians the harsh realities of Vladimir Putin’s war.

“We need to use absolutely clear tools to coerce Russia [into negotiation]. One of them is a military instrument of coercion.

“That is, we need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia, in addition to economic and diplomatic tools. In the Kursk region, we are seeing the optimisation of this military tool of coercion to force Russia into the negotiation process.”

Ukrainian servicemen operate an armoured military vehicle in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia (AFP via Getty)

Nearly 200,000 Russians in Kursk – and the neighbouring region of Belgorod, where a state of emergency has been declared – have been forced to flee their homes and relocate to temporary shelters.

Ukrainian forces have also taken Russian soldiers as prisoners of war to use as bargaining chips for their own civilians previously taken by Putin’s troops. Pictures on Wednesday showed blindfolded personnel in Russian uniforms in the back of Ukrainian trucks, heading across the border.

One Ukrainian colonel told The Independent that as many as 2,000 Russian soldiers had been taken captive, a figure that could not be independently verified.

Mr Podolyak is the first Ukrainian official to speak on the record about Ukraine’s motivation behind the incursion and what he believes is needed to bring the conflict to an end.

“There has to be a complex, a multitude of instruments to force Russia to stop this war,” he said. “One incursion is not going to be enough for Putin to realise that the war is not worth it.

“[Russians] don’t discuss the war, and they generally feel quite comfortable because there is a war going on somewhere, someone is killing. It’s interesting for them to watch on TV.

“But when the war proceeds into the territory of Russia, they are certainly scared. They are shocked. This has a significant impact on the psychological state of Russia. It is also a tool of influence.”

Russian civilians get on buses to be evacuated from their homes in border settlements in Kursk (EPA)

Ukraine’s military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi claims they have occupied nearly 400 square miles of Russian territory, while Mr Zelensky said this week that the military had taken control of 74 settlements in Kursk and was advancing further into the region. Western analysts estimate Ukraine has taken around 300 square miles.

President Putin was caught unaware by the surprise incursion, and footage from a meeting of Russian officials this week showed him shutting down any talk of the raid, which was a closely guarded secret even among Kyiv’s most senior officials.

When the governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, began to describe the extent of Ukraine’s control of the area, Putin abruptly cut him off, demanding the official focus be on the “socio-economic situation”.

While tens of millions of Ukrainian people have lived with war and suffered continual displacement for years, this is the first time in earnest that Russian civilians are living through a comparable experience.

Russian forces have resorted to dropping deadly glide bombs, capable of levelling whole buildings, onto their own territory, and onto some of the houses of those displaced, to target the Ukrainian offensive.

Ukrainians who have described the “hell” of living with the constant destruction in their home towns, are now enjoying a brief stay of execution as the launchpads for the missiles in Russia are immobilised by Kyiv’s advancing troops.

But civilians in Ukraine’s Sumy region, which borders the Kursk area, have not been left unscathed as Russia continues to fire drones and missiles from afar. Kyiv was also forced to lock down the region over fears Russian saboteurs could infiltrate and attempt to undermine the incursion.

Ukrainian servicemen wait in a military vehicle to head for a combat mission, in the Sumy region (AFP via Getty)

Ukraine’s key Western allies, including Britain and the US, say they were not informed about the attack before it happened, but Mr Podolyak suggested this was not the case.

“There are certain things that have to be done with the element of surprise, and that have to happen on a local level,” he said. “But there were discussions between partner forces, just not on the public level.”

One item of contention between Ukraine and Nato is the use of long-range warfare, which is banned for offensive operations against Russia.

Mr Podolyak, who described Sir Keir Starmer’s election victory as “very positive”, said Ukraine was deeply frustrated at not being able to use missiles, such as Britain’s long-range Storm Shadow, deep in Russian territory.

During a visit to Downing Street in the first week of Sir Keir’s premiership, Mr Zelensky asked for permission to carry out deeper strikes into Russia but was rebuffed. Sir Keir said there would be no change in policy. He declined to say, but previous hesitancy has been attributed to fears it could provoke the Kremlin.

“I can’t understand the parameters of this discussion,” Mr Podolyak said. “Ukraine either needs to defeat the target at its source, namely destroying the bases from where the missile and artillery strikes are being launched, or be able to defend itself from the ground with anti-air weapons, which we can’t do because we don’t have enough. That decision does not make sense.

“When weapons are given to Ukraine, it [should] become our responsibility. We have all these conversations about international law but it is our own choice how we expend those resources.”

He added: “I am sure that if the informal ban on the use of [long-range] weapons was lifted, the landscape of the war would look a lot different. Russia would understand the cost of war is too high.”