The Battle of Kursk from July to August 1943 marked a decisive turning point in the Soviet campaign to drive Hitler’s Wehrmacht from the USSR. Eighty-one years later, will another Battle of Kursk become a major event in Ukraine’s campaign to purge its territory from Vladimir Putin’s forces?
The German debacle in 1943 transpired just two years after Hitler’s June 1941 Blitzkrieg carried his forces swiftly beyond Leningrad until they stalled, froze, and shriveled at Stalingrad. Today’s Battle of Kursk takes place just two-and-a-half years since Putin’s forces, hoping for a lightening victory, poured into Ukraine in early 2022.
Putin, like Hitler, underestimated his target and overvalued his assets. Soon, both dictators faced difficulties supplying their forces and replacing losses of troops and equipment. Neither the vozhd’ nor the Fűhrer anticipated the help the United States would provide to the victims of their aggression.
Elements of surprise played key roles in each Battle of Kursk. In 1943, the Soviets hid the tank traps and mines they prepared while waiting for a German attack. The Soviets erected dummy airfields so the Germans wasted fuel and ammunition on fake targets. Red Army leaders avoided any communication the Germans could intercept. They masked the large quantity of tanks they assembled and would throw into battle when conditions ripened. Before opting to retreat, the Wehrmacht lost thousands of men and machines in the largest tank battle ever.
In the summer of 2024, Ukraine gave no sign it would divert its forces from the defense of Kharkiv and Donbas, where Putin’s armies were making small but consistent advances. There are provisos of course. The first battle was a huge clash of 20th century armies in a continent-wide war; Ukraine’s incursion is just that — a limited cross-border operation.
But it nonetheless offers important indicators of where things stand. Remember that throughout July, Ukraine was able to assemble thousands of troops with armored vehicles and artillery near the border region. If Russian intelligence warned of a Ukrainian buildup, the authorities took no action to prepare.
Russia has imposed “counter-terrorism” measures, but Ukrainians occupied Russian villages and opened up a zone approximately 20 miles deep and 40 miles wide. They destroyed convoys of trucks and armored vehicles. They menaced a nuclear power plant and a gas transfer station and compelled authorities to evacuate about 100,000 civilians.
Whether Ukrainian forces remain in Russia or pull back, they have demonstrated the fragility of the entire Putin system — not just its intelligence and military capabilities but the viability of top-down dictation. Nassim Taleb explained that what he termed antifragility is the ability to gain from disorder. He noted that while most things break when subjected to shocks (fragility), some thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, and disorder (antifragility.)
Vladimir Putin’s reign initially benefited from chaos. But his Russian state is not shock resistant, It looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption that, if a crucial part weakens, falls apart. Trained to execute orders from the top down, the system has no capacity for self-organized resilience. A Rube Goldberg machine uses each component in a chain reaction to reach a goal, but the chain reaction can also reverse to unwind the entire structure.
Today’s fragility recalls the 1980s when, after vigorous expansion, the Soviet empire dead-ended in Afghanistan, revealing flaws that led to system collapse.
How many shocks can the Putin machine sustain? In 2023 it did nothing to stop the Wagner Group’s march toward Moscow and appeared paralyzed by uncertainty. Though his mercenaries met no resistance, Yevgeny Prigozhin halted his potential coup for some minor concessions (a mistake for which he paid with his life.) Since then, the Kremlin boss has purged some top military officials and presided over dozens of suspicious deaths and disappearances. Beneath the surface, fragile instability and uncertainty,
The federation’s demography also warns that a breaking point may be imminent. Deaths outnumber births. Many of Russia’s best and brightest have emigrated, as have many guest-workers afraid of racist attacks. Non-Russians in federal subjects far from Moscow complain that their young men are being massacred in Ukraine even as services in their homelands dwindle.
The Russian Federation, like the even larger Soviet Union, is probably too far flung to function efficiently. Now the problems of size and ethnic discord are compounded by the burdens of war.
The 2024 Battle of Kursk warns the Putin regime: Your tyranny is fragile and cannot continue on its present track.
Walter Clemens is Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (Washington DC: Westphalia Press, 2023).
