Ukraine can use tanks and armoured vehicles donated by Canada within Russia without restrictions, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday.
The statement comes amid growing speculation among military experts about how long Ukraine can sustain its offensive in Russia’s Kursk region – and the long-term impact the surprise cross-border incursion will have on the long-running war.
Canada has donated eight Leopard 2A4 tanks, several dozen armoured combat support vehicles and hundreds of armoured patrol vehicles, as well as a handful of M-777 howitzers.
News footage taken by CNN along the Ukrainian border on Thursday showed a Canadian-made Senator patrol car crossing the border into Russia.
“Ukrainians know best how to defend their homeland and we are committed to supporting their capabilities in doing so,” Andrée-Anne Poulin, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said in a media statement.
“Canada does not impose any geographic restrictions on the use of the military equipment we donate to Ukraine.”
It is unclear how much, if any, of the equipment donated by Canada was in the hands of the specially equipped Ukrainian brigades when they stormed across the border on August 6.
Poulin said Canada’s donations always meet the requirements of the Arms Trade Treaty, the international agreement aimed at reducing illicit arms supplies and human rights abuses.
Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskii, Ukraine’s top military commander, said his troops now control dozens of villages and 1,150 square kilometers in the Kursk region. He also said Kyiv had set up a military command in the region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had taken control of the Russian city of Sudzha, which is located near a Russian natural gas terminal, a key distribution point for Europe’s energy supplies.
“A brave, brilliant and courageous step”
The audacity of the cross-border attack – which came nearly 30 months after the war began and at a time when Ukraine is battling to stop a Russian advance in the eastern Donbass region – has surprised and impressed many former senior Western military commanders.
“It is a brave, brilliant and courageous move by a number of people who are literally at the forefront of modern combat tactics and strategy,” said retired Canadian Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie, a former army and NATO commander in Afghanistan.
Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said everyone – both in the West and in Russia – underestimated the Ukrainians from the start. The fact that they were able to build an attack force and carry out the raid under Moscow’s nose speaks volumes, he said.
“They clearly have more (military capabilities) than we thought or were given credit for,” Hodges said.
“That is why I would never underestimate what Ukraine can or could achieve.”
Phillip Karber, who teaches at the National Defense University in Washington, has made 39 trips to Ukraine since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. He said Ukrainian assault brigades that crossed into Russia have been reinforced with additional troops and equipment.
Despite their success, the Ukrainians did not advance as far into the Kursk region as hoped.
“The Russians got there much faster than (the Ukrainians) expected,” Karber said, adding that he believed the Ukrainians were stopped halfway to their obvious target: a heavily wooded, easily defended area further inside Russia.
The crisis could have various effects.
After wreaking chaos and withdrawing some of the Russian troops from the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Syrskii was able to order an orderly retreat to a defensive position on the Ukrainian side.
The Ukrainians could try to hold and defend their captured territories to create a strategic buffer zone. They could also try to break through weakly defended Russian territory elsewhere and create another frontline.
Nine days after the surprise border crossing, Ukraine continues to maintain and expand its control over Russian territory. Moscow has announced that it will end the incursion, but there are no signs of this happening so far.
On Thursday, there were reports that Ukrainian forces had attempted to enter the Belgorod region bordering Kursk.
The Ukrainians are also reportedly building fortifications in the captured Kursk region and are apparently making preparations to fight against an expected Russian counteroffensive.
Karber said he believes the Russians need to make their move before it starts raining in September, as it does in this region most years.
He said he was not sure what the Ukrainians would do.
Hard to win, harder to keep
Leslie said that creating a strategic buffer zone for Ukraine would be incredibly difficult given the current manpower shortages.
“If they tried to hold the fortress, the cost of deploying troops would be extraordinarily high,” he said.
“Don’t underestimate the Russians’ willingness to put tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of soldiers against them, even if they would be poorly armed and would certainly die. The Russians don’t care.”
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War stated in a recent assessment of the Kursk Offensive that it could have profound long-term implications for the course of the war.
Russia largely defends its border with Ukraine only weakly and focuses on conquering the eastern and southern regions of its neighbor.
The incursion could force the Kremlin to view the entire thousand-kilometer-long border region as a front line.
“The Russian military command has treated the international border with northeastern Ukraine essentially as a dormant front of the theater of war after Russia withdrew from Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts in the spring of 2022 and Ukraine liberated significant areas in Kharkiv oblast in the fall of 2022,” the institute said in an assessment dated August 11, 2024.
“Moscow’s reaction may require the Russian military command to take into account the need for personnel and material for the defense of the international border,” the assessment continues. This would lead to a further shortage of personnel in the Russian army.
