Volodymyr Zelensky He’s a lonely man these days.

The last step of the Ukrainian president through Western capitals, where he met with the president joe biden in late September and several European heads of state in October, produced few new security commitments from their foreign backers. kyiv’s request to use Western-made missiles against targets deep in Russia remains frozen. zelenski the so-called “Victory Plan” hasn’t impressed anyone: it’s less of a “plan” and more of a weapons wish list that Ukrainian officials have been reciting every week for the past two and a half years.

The battlefield is not looking very good for the Ukrainians either. Although the Russian military continues to take a beating (September was reportedly its deadliest month since the war began: their offensive in Donetsk is undermining Ukrainian defensive positions. russian president Vladimir Putin is committed to capturing the Donbas region and is more than willing to sacrifice many young Russians to achieve it. The strategy, brutal as it is, appears to be working, although more slowly than Putin would like. In early October, the Russian army captured Vuhledar after a months-long offensive there; this week, they took Selydovea small town on the road to the Pokrovsk logistics center.

Ukraine’s offensive in August in Russia’s Kursk region was supposed to prevent any of this from happening, or at least force the Kremlin to make some difficult decisions about where to allocate its troops and resources. Zelensky’s decision took the United States, his largest military backer, by surprise and caused divisions within the Ukrainian military establishment. According to a September report by Politico Europe, Valery Zaluzhny, kyiv’s top military commander during the first two years of the war, object because he believed that the plan was not well thought out enough. Zelensky, however, saw the raid as a way to turn the tide after a year of crushing losses.

However, the real objective of the Kursk operation was a mystery. There was never a unified theory of the case. When Zelensky spoke about it, he gave several reasons for its release. First, it was about pushing back the Russians from Ukraine’s northern border to ensure that the Sumy region was not subject to daily Russian missile attacks. Then there was an attempt to capture Russian soldiers and use them as leverage to force the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war. So Zelensky speak about how occupying parts of Kursk would increase kyiv’s power at the negotiating table when Putin finally decided to engage in serious diplomacy.

Whatever the game plan, the Kursk offensive it was a bet. The operation could have a brilliant outcome, putting the Russian military at a disadvantage once again and forcing Putin’s inner circle to rethink its war strategy. Or it would backfire, exacerbate Ukraine’s manpower problem and push negotiations on ending the war even further apart.

Unfortunately, more than two months later, Kursk’s tactics in Ukraine are closer to the second scenario.

After a frankly pathetic few weeks, the Russians regrouped, or at least regrouped enough. About a month after Ukraine’s initial foray into the region, a Russian counteroffensive was launched in Kursk. While it is true that the Ukrainians are still entrenched in some areas, the Russians They have recovered about half of the land previously lost. It is difficult to determine the extent of Ukraine’s casualties, but it can be safely assumed that they are considerable given the amount of munitions the Russians have dropped on Ukrainian positions (by the way, the same can be assumed about Russian casualties).

More significant than the reality on the ground, however, is how incorrect the Ukrainian government’s calculations have proven to be.

One of kyiv’s central assumptions was that pressuring the Russians on their own territory would be such a monumental embarrassment for Putin that he would redeploy tens of thousands of troops from eastern Ukraine back to the home front. This, in turn, would lessen the pressure faced by Ukrainian troops in Donetsk. However, that has turned out to be an optimistic scenario; In fact, Putin has redeployed troops from Ukraine to reinforce the defenses in Kursk, but not from the places in Donetsk that the Ukrainians expected. The front line in Donetsk is even more active today than before the Kursk offensive began in August, and the Russians now control more territory in this Ukrainian province than they did in the summer.

Is Putin closer to discussing a solution to the war? The Ukrainians hoped so. But preliminary talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials on ceasing attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure were blown up at the time Zelensky ordered the Kursk offensive. Unsurprisingly, Putin saw the raid as a stab in the back and called off the operation, while Moscow called the Ukrainian offensive an escalation. This should not have been a surprise to Zelensky or the people who advise him; Whenever Putin came under pressure, he responded by upping the ante rather than bowing down. Zelensky, perhaps recognizing his initial mistake, now he’s trying to get those debates back on track.

It is always easy to attack a war from thousands of miles away on Monday morning. But it doesn’t take much foresight to see how Ukraine’s gamble on Kursk could go disastrously wrong.

Daniel R. DePetris is a Defense Priorities fellow and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.