PSCRP-BESA Reports No 81 (Sept 5, 2024)
Despite the fact that the top military and political leadership of Ukraine is still hesitant to make lengthy official statements regarding the tasks of the offensive operation of the AFU in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, it is quite possible to assume with a high degree of confidence that they include the following:
- Creation of a security zone on the Russian territory along the northern border of Ukraine, primarily adjacent to Sumy region, making it more difficult for the Russians to shell Ukrainian territory. (President Volodymyr Zelensky has already mentioned this).
- Forcing Russia to withdraw some of its troops from the fronts in Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine, where the AFU has been driven into a slow retreat in recent months.
- Strengthening the morale of the AFU and the Ukrainian population, exhausted by a long and difficult war with no promise of its end in sight.
- Incentivizing Western allies to lift all restrictions on the use of the weapons they supply by demonstrating through the occupation of Russian territories that Russia is actually not that frightening.
- Triggering internal political conflicts in the Russian Federation by demonstrating the inability of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, of which Vladimir Putin is the supreme commander-in-chief, to defend Russian territory.
At the same time, the successful offensive of the AFU in Kursk oblast is covertly contributing to the Ukrainian society’s discussion of the nature of modern Ukrainian statehood and the role of Ukrainian ethnicity in the emerging Ukrainian political nation. Until recently, the idea that the Ukrainian political nation is formed within the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine, although they had been determined by the Soviet authorities and do not correspond to the original aspirations of the Ukrainian national movement of the early twentieth century, unequivocally prevailed in the internal Ukrainian discourse. Thus, the civil-political factor prevailed over the ethnic one. In recent weeks, the Ukrainian media have featured numerous publications with screamers like “Sudzha is Ukraine? The historian told how Russia captured the city” and even “Ukrainian Sudzha, Taganrog, Voronezh and Kuban. How and when historical Ukrainian lands became Russian”. They sort of refer the readers’ attention to the decree issued earlier this year by the President of Ukraine concerning the Ukrainian ethnic territories within the Russian Federation. The subconscious idea that “Sudzha is Ukraine” created by such publications is reinforced by the reports of Ukrainian journalists from the AFU-controlled territories of Kursk region. Almost all of the locals interviewed in them speak Russian with an accent typical of Ukrainians, many of the older ones even speak Surzhik, a Russo-Ukrainian pidgin. In the rural areas, some older people simply speak Ukrainian.
The debate is not limited to nostalgic historical comments, but is acquiring an actual practical dimension. Thus, a well-known Ukrainian military expert, Colonel Oleksandr Musienko, openly stated that since from a historical point of view such regions as Kursk oblast and Starodubshchyna (currently part of the Bryansk region of the Russian Federation) belonged to the Hetmanshchyna (an autonomous Ukrainian state entity that existed in 1648–1764), it is possible that in the future Ukraine may reconsider the definition and demarcation of its currently existing internationally recognized borders. It should be noted that in Ukrainian historiography, the territories of the Russian Federation bordering with Ukraine from the north and north-east are usually called Eastern Slobozhanshchina and are included in the ethnic Ukrainian territory. We are talking about practically the entire Belgorod oblast, as well as the south of Kursk and Voronezh oblasts (Starodubshchina is not considered as part of Eastern Slobozhanshchina). Historically, among the East Slavic settlers who colonized these areas in the 17th–18th centuries, Ukrainians did indeed prevail. Together with the territories of the neighboring Kharkiv, Cherkassy and Sumy regions of the present-day Ukrainian state, they were part of the historical area called Sloboda Ukraine.
Some prominent figures of Ukrainian culture came from Eastern Slobozhanshchina. For example, the founder of the ideology of the Ukrainian national movement, prominent historian Mykola Kostomarov (1817–1885) was born in the village of Yurasovka in the Ostrogozhsky district of Voronezh province, and the Ukrainian poet, playwright and translator Yevhen Pluzhnyk (1898–1936), who was subject to repression on charges of Ukrainian nationalism, was born in the village of Kantemirovka in Voronezh province.
A significant part of these territories — in particular the cities of Belgorod and Sudzha — in late 1917 became part of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, whose legal successor the present-day Ukraine tends to consider itself. After the victory of the Bolsheviks and the establishment of Soviet power, the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR insisted on the inclusion of Eastern Slobozhanshchina into Ukraine, citing ethnographic and linguistic principles. However, these demands were rejected by the Moscow leadership with reference to economic inexpediency, the advanced process of Russification of local Ukrainians, and the interspersed settlements of Ukrainians and Russians throughout Slobozhanshchina, including its western part, which had been ceded to the Ukrainian SSR. Nevertheless, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, some districts of the present-day Voronezh, Kursk and Belgorod regions were Ukrainianized. Here, schools, the press, and part of the paperwork functioned in the Ukrainian language.
In the mid-1930s, the Ukrainianization of the predominantly Ukrainian-populated areas of Eastern Slobozhanshchina was curtailed by administrative decision. All Ukrainian schools and periodicals were closed. Since then and up to the present time, a policy of intensified Russification has been pursued in the region. The number of officially registered Ukrainian population and its share in the total population of the three above mentioned regions is now small. According to the Russian census of 2020, there were 13,260 Ukrainians (0.57% of the population) in Voronezh oblast, 5,780 Ukrainians (0.53% of the population) in Kursk oblast, and 15,481 Ukrainians (1% of the population) in Belgorod oblast. However, in reality, the number of people of Ukrainian origin in these regions of the Russian Federation is greater by an order of magnitude.
The Ukrainian media’s intensified discussion of the topic of historically Ukrainian ethnic territories that are part of the Russian Federation creates the impression that public opinion is being prepared for Ukraine’s territorial claims against Russia. At the same time, reports from the AFU-controlled territories of Kursk oblast often mention — seemingly as a joke — the possibility of holding a referendum on self-determination among the local population. Undoubtedly, this manner of presentation creates a positive and reassuring effect on Ukrainian public opinion. However, Ukraine’s Western allies are hardly ready to take Ukraine’s territorial claims to the Russian Federation — even if not put forward by Ukrainian officials — for granted. Apparently, in order to reassure these allies, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tykhiy hastened to declare that “Ukraine does not intend to keep the parts of Kursk oblast occupied by the AFU”.
Obviously, the talk about holding a “referendum” in the AFU-controlled territories of Kursk region, as well as the “Kursk People’s Republic” meme often mentioned in the Ukrainian media, mirrors the fake “referendums” on the proclamation of “people’s republics” (DNR and LNR) and accession to Russia (in Crimea, and later in the occupied settlements of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts) held by the Russians in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Nevertheless, if the AFU’s control of the occupied territories of the Russian Federation is to last and, accordingly, some kind of organization of the civilian population’s life is required, there are essentially only two options:
- The Russian opposition will establish their own power structures in these territories.
- Such structures will be created by the local population itself, at the initiative and with the support of Ukraine.
In any case, the quasi-state buffer entities created in this fashion will become Ukrainian proxies, and possibly an intermediate stage on the way to the integration of these territories into Ukraine. The complete inability of the Russian opposition – with the exception of small volunteer military formations cooperating with Ukraine and their political representative Ilya Ponomarev, a former State Duma deputy living in Kyiv – to take any active steps, as clearly demonstrated over the past two and a half years, makes it highly unlikely that the Russian territories liberated by the AFU from Putin’s dictatorship will become the beginnings of the “beautiful Russia of the future.”
This seems to be well understood in Kyiv. Another statement by Colonel Oleksandr Musienko, the Ukrainian military expert quoted above, is a hint that Ukraine considers the demise of the Russian Federation in its current format as the only path to victory — but not to a definitive end to the conflict. Speaking about the possible change of Ukraine’s borders not in the north but in the east, he said that, in his opinion, “the most logical border with the remnants of Russia could be the Don River, which is a natural water barrier.” In other words, we are talking about the theoretical possibility of annexing the southern parts of Voronezh oblast and about half of Rostov oblast.
In a small part of present-day Rostov oblast of the Russian Federation — primarily in the Taganrog district, an absolute Ukrainian majority was recorded as early as in the first third of the 20th century. Moreover, Taganrog district was part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1920–1924. However, most of the other territories of the lower right bank of the Don were never included in the ethnic Ukrainian territories. But for military analysts this is of little importance, because from their point of view it is not a question of restoring historical justice in the form of including ethnic Ukrainian territories, whose current population is heavily Russified, into Ukraine (this is just a pretext), but of creating acceptable geopolitical conditions for Ukraine’s existence under the constant threat of military conflict with Russia, no matter what it may become at the end of the current Russian-Ukrainian war.