Russian President Vladimir Putin will launch a counteroffensive to try to recapture territory in the Kursk region seized by Ukrainian troops, but Russian forces will face "a tough fight" CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said Wednesday. Cohen told a national security industry conference that the significance of the Ukrainian incursion, which has overrun about 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) of Russian countryside, remains to be seen. Ukrainian forces crashed through Russia’s western border into the Kursk region on August 6 in a surprise attack that continues. While Kiev has said it has no intention of annexing the territory it has seized, Ukrainian troops are building defensive lines and appear intent on keeping "any of this area for a period of time," Cohen told the Intelligence and National Security Summit.
"We can be sure that Putin will launch a counter-offensive to try to regain this ground," Cohen said. "I think our expectation is that this will be a tough match for the Russians."
Putin said "not only will he have to deal with the fact that there is now a front line within Russian territory that he will have to deal with, but he has to deal with the repercussions in his own society that they have lost a piece of Russian territory."
Ukraine says it controls more than 1,200 square kilometers (463 square miles) of the Kursk region. Pavel Durov was placed under formal investigation by a French judge on Wednesday. Ukraine’s success in Kursk "has the potential to change the dynamic" of the conflict "a little ahead" he continued without elaborating. Ukraine has claimed 100 settlements in its invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, while Russian forces continue to advance in the eastern Donetsk region. Cohen said Russia has made those gains "at extraordinary cost" in troops and equipment and "maybe not" capture the city of Pokrovsk from the main logistics center of Ukraine.
"But at the end of the day, none of this is game-changing in a strategic sense" for the Russians, he continued. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the war with Russia would eventually end through dialogue, but that Kiev must be in a strong position and that he would present a plan to US President Joe Biden and his two potential successors . Putin said any deal must begin with Ukraine’s acceptance "realities on the ground," which would leave Russia in possession of significant parts of four Ukrainian regions as well as Crimea.
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