Ukraine has taken the initiative on the battlefield from Russia with a cross-border offensive in Russia's Kursk region, but Kiev's Western allies remain mostly "strangely silent" about this sudden action, the Associated Press agency assesses, also indicating that NATO today refused to comment on what happening in Kursk.
Later Sunday, while Russian forces are still struggling to respond to that strange attack, the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army, General Oleksandr Sirski, went public with the information that his soldiers control about 1.000 square kilometers in the Kursk region.
The attack, it seems, also surprised many supporters of Ukraine in NATO and the European Union, and it is not known to what extent they were informed about the action before the offensive - and whether they were informed at all.
US President Joseph Biden told reporters yesterday that he was fully aware of the situation, "every four to five hours for the last six days," and that the Ukrainian offensive "creates a real dilemma for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin."
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When asked by reporters to be more specific, the US president said: "That's all I'm going to say about it while the matter is active."
In Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Nabila Masrali also did not want to go into details, saying only that "the European Union is not involved and does not comment on the operational development of events on the front".
"We fully support the legitimate expression of Ukraine's inherent right to self-defense and efforts to regain its territorial integrity and sovereignty, to repel and suppress Russia's illegal aggression," she told reporters.
What Kyiv intends with this action is not entirely clear.
Some analysts speculate that the incursion is aimed at strengthening Ukraine's position in future peace negotiations, and military experts agree that this action should provide some relief to exhausted Ukrainian troops, by drawing enemy soldiers from the front in eastern Ukraine, to a new front in Russia itself.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that the aim of the operation is to protect Ukraine from Russian attacks with long-range missiles launched from the Kursk region, and that Ukraine is not interested in seizing occupied territories, but in protecting the lives of its population.
The ministry claims that Russia has carried out more than 2.000 strikes against Ukraine from the Kursk territory, using missiles, cannons, grenades, drones and floating bombs.
The mostly reluctant and sometimes contradictory reactions of the government's allies in Kiev are puzzling, although they seem to agree that Ukrainian troops should be allowed to defend their country's territory even if that means cross-border attacks on the country that is attacking them.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk very clearly supported Ukraine's invasion of Russia, although he was not consulted about it in advance. According to him, Russian actions in Ukraine "contain features of genocide, crimes against humanity, and Ukraine has every right to wage war in such a way as to paralyze Russia as efficiently as possible in its aggressive intentions."
NATO declined to comment on the Kursk operations today, but outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg regularly says that Ukraine has the right under international law to defend itself against aggressors and that its Western allies remain within their rights to help Kiev do so.
On the other hand, legal experts agree on what the spokesman of the German Ministry of Defense, Arne Kolac, said on Monday - that "international law authorizes a country that defends itself to do so from the territory of the attacker."
However, the world's largest security organization - NATO - is also extremely reluctant to be drawn into any wider war with Russia, which has a huge and diverse nuclear arsenal, and some allies are also opposed to the weapons they send to Ukraine being used for attacks on Russian soil.
An example is Italy, which made it clear on Monday that its weapons cannot be used for this purpose.
Ukraine is already using US weapons for cross-border attacks since Washington eased its restrictions on that type of use.
Part of the silence could also stem from the fact that Ukraine's Western allies have promised to help it defend itself, but not to help it win - partly out of fear of what might happen next to Russia and its vast nuclear arsenal if Putin lives defeat.
The former commander of US forces in Europe, General Ben Hodges, criticized what he called the "policy of escalation management" and the lack of commitment from Western allies to help Ukraine defeat Russia.
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