Days after Donald Trump cut military aid, and a day after he blindfolded Ukraine’s forces by suspending intelligence sharing, Russia has carved into Ukrainian-held Kursk, escalated air raids and bombed civilian cities.
In response, the US president has threatened to increase economic sanctions against Russia, stating that Vladimir Putin’s forces were “absolutely pounding” their enemy.
A more rational response would be, of course, to allow Ukraine to fight on by lifting the suspension of military aid and sharing intelligence again.
European leaders are frantically scrambling to replace the sudden cut in military intelligence, which includes satellite imagery, early warning systems, and vital signals intelligence.
But Ukraine’s needs are immediate.
Russia has highlighted this with bombing attacks on supply lines leading to Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region. US intelligence provided early warning of impending Russian attacks. Now Russian jets are able to roam more freely in the Ukrainian battle space and also bomb Slaviansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk province.
Missiles and drones have filled the skies over Ukraine – most of them shot down or disabled, but Ukraine is also running out of the Patriot missiles that the US was supplying before the cut to aid.
Kursk is where the Russians have been quickest to exploit Mr Trump’s moves against Ukraine which are, he claimed, intended to force Kyiv into negotiations.
In early February there were signs of Russian troop reinforcements and a resupply around Kursk. Ukrainian intelligence officers in the neighbouring province of Sumy believed that the Russians were planning a counter-attack in an effort to drive Ukrainian forces out of the lozenge-shaped piece of land captured by Ukraine last year.
Russian special forces also conducted cross-border raids to draw Ukrainian forces away from protecting the main supply lines into Ukrainian held areas of Kursk.
Ukraine tried to disrupt Russian plans to retake Kursk in late February and March – forcing the Russians back from their locations north of Sudzha.
But now a message from a senior officer in Sumy sent via text simply read “we’re losing”.
It would be wrong to attribute every battlefield advance by Russia to Mr Trump’s crippling cuts to military aid and his blinding of their intelligence gathering.
Russia has been sending tens of thousands of soldiers into “meat grinder” attacks around the eastern town of Pokrovsk for months – slowly making small tactical gains, but at enormous cost. The Kremlin has been swarming the Ukrainian skies with Iranian Shahed drones, mixed in with devastating ballistic missiles, since the mid summer of 2022.
But in the past two weeks there was a sudden and unexplained drop in the Russian attacks on the Pokrovsk front – and of Ukrainian casualties.
It is now clear that the military effort was being concentrated in preparation for the Kursk operation.
In lightning raids the Russians have split Ukrainian forces in two using elite airborne and marine brigades potentially trapping Ukrainian soldiers in the north of the salient.
Russia’s trade with the US is about $3.5 billion following sanctions that have already excluded Moscow from access to international banking, strangled its oil industry’s access to the west, and choked off technology that could be used to kill Ukrainians.
Kyiv has hoped to use its control of part of Kursk in future negotiations with Russia as part of a possible territorial swap.
If Moscow prevails in the latest operation to drive Ukraine out of Russian territory, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will not have that card to play.
But he cannot be surprised that the Russians moved so quickly after the cut in US military and intelligence support for his country so quickly.
His only question will be “was this a coincidence?” The answer has to be “no’”
