Ukraine’s continuing incursion has played to its strengths: Movement, tactical innovation and the ability to exploit small successes to bigger achievements.

Ukraine has also managed to leverage the limited resources it has and a picture is now emerging of new arms used in novel ways that have caught Russian forces off-guard and kept them off balance.

Drones and jamming

Both Russia and Ukraine extensively use drones of all types for reconnaissance and attack. But Ukraine’s innovation is to combine attack drones with electronic warfare units that jam the signals of Russian drones, blinding them.

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This allowed Ukrainian drones to attack targets and move ground units forward.

Once there, the jammers were moved up, and the process repeated in a leapfrog manner allowing Ukrainian forces to advance relatively intact and leaving Russian military planners with very little in the way of information about Ukrainian movements.

This innovation, combined with the extensive use of small “sabotage” units, designed to be highly mobile, penetrating deep behind Russian lines and spreading maximum chaos, helped confuse the Russian high command who made bad use of local units, resulting in their mass surrender or destruction.

Foreign weapons and red lines

Russia has always been very clear that the use of foreign weapon systems on Russian soil would not be tolerated.

The Ukrainian attack on Russian-held Crimea in late June, which destroyed part of Russia’s deep space network, used US-made ATACM short-range missiles. This provoked a furious response from Russia, whose officials issued a formal diplomatic rebuke to the United States.

There are now credible reports that British Challenger tanks have been used by Ukraine in Kursk

If Western weapons systems were used in Kursk that could be another red line. It is this gradual erosion of what is unacceptable to Russia that is most dangerous.

Sooner or later, Russia will have to draw an actual red line, stating what serious repercussions the West and/or Ukraine would face if it was crossed.

If its red line goes ignored, there could be disastrous consequences for all and the widening of the conflict.

At the moment, President Putin has called Ukraine’s incursion an “anti-terror” operation.

If Ukraine’s foothold gets any bigger, he will have to declare it an invasion. If this happens, Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, which is a Russian-led alliance of post-Soviet countries, will be invoked.

This article, similar to NATO’s Article 5, concerns collective security.

Attack one member and all the other members are treaty-obligated to help. NATO would have to step in or see Ukraine destroyed, the war widening dramatically into a general conflict between two blocs.