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By Hugh Cameron
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A member of Vladimir Putin's inner circle has promised to respond "mercilessly" and to penetrate further into Ukrainian territory following Tuesday's incursion in Kursk.
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and prime minister who currently serves as deputy chair of the country's Security Council, gave his reaction to the raid in a lengthy Telegram post on Thursday morning.
"It is necessary to learn a serious lesson from what happened and fulfill what Chief of the General Staff V. Gerasimov promised the Supreme Commander-in-Chief - to mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy," Medvedev wrote, referring to comments made by Russian army Chief Valery Gerasimov.
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As reported by Russian state-run news agency TASS, Gerasimov promised the Russian president that Ukraine's forces would be swiftly defeated in the southwestern border region.
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Medvedev's post continued: "There is also another important political and legal consequence of what happened. From this moment on, the [Special Military Operation] must acquire an openly extraterritorial character.
"This is no longer just an operation to return our official territories and punish the Nazis. It is possible and necessary to go to the lands of the still existing Ukraine. To Odessa, to Kharkov, to Dnepropetrovsk, to Nikolaev. To Kyiv and further. There should be no restrictions in the sense of some recognized borders of the Ukrainian Reich."
Before commemorating those Russians who died in the fighting, Medvedev said: "Let everyone realize this, including the English bastards: we will stop only when we consider it acceptable and profitable for ourselves."
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Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, spoke to Newsweek about the raid and Medvedev's comments.
Savill said that Medvedev's comments cannot be directly taken as an indicator of what the Russian response to the raid will be, adding that the former prime minister "sort of exists to voice the most imaginative versions of Ukraine's destruction."
Medvedev has frequently made headlines with his protracted Telegram posts since the outbreak of the conflict, threatening everything from a total occupation of Ukraine to a nuclear confrontation with Kyiv's Western backers.
However, Savill said he thinks the raid will have resulted in a "shock" to the Russian military system.
"What's interesting is that the Russians don't appear to have detected or really anticipated this Ukrainian operation. And that does say something about improvements in Ukrainian operational security and counterintelligence."
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He noted that while Ukraine's motivations for the operation remain unclear — whether to put political pressure on Putin, take prisoners of war as collateral, or distract the Russian forces — a palpable effect will be to diminish Ukraine's ground forces elsewhere.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, via Telegram, Ukraine has so far lost up to 660 soldiers and 82 armored vehicles since the incursion began.
"What it does do is use up or commit a lot of Ukrainian forces when they don't have a lot in reserve," Savill said. "And that's why I think there's a degree of concern or skepticism depending on what the duration of the operation is."
Savill said that this factored into Ukraine's largely unsuccessful 2023 counteroffensive.
"One of the things that came out of our research in 2023 is that they weren't able to marry up the people, the training, and the equipment for the counteroffensive in time," Savill said. "So the way that the counteroffensive played out was a lot of very small maneuvers and assaults that weren't as coordinated as they could have been. And they'll want to rectify that for next year if that's their plan."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky already confirmed that preparations are underway for a new counteroffensive, which Ukrainian General Oleksandr Pavliuk said could take place as early as this year.
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