Much is being made in the Western media of how much territory the Ukrainians have "conquered" in Russia, in Kursk Oblast, and how much difficulty the Russians are having in getting rid of them. And, indeed, there is a grain of truth in this. A grain. Indeed, the Ukrainians are operating over a fairly large area of largely unoccupied dense forest on the border, of perhaps a few hundred square miles, with minimal population. And, indeed, because they are operating in mobile units, and not really exerting any stable control over anything, or even staying anywhere very long, they are fairly hard to kill in large numbers. They are operating in the countryside in small mobile units, and so they are hard to pin down.

But, this also means they really can't do anything much, other than engage in some disruptive tactics. They can't build anything much, they can't engage in large scale military confrontations, they can't organize the local population, they can't directly confront organized Russian forces. They are also very vulnerable to air attacks, having no real anti-aircraft capacity.

Fact is, and this point isn't being emphasized, I think, the Ukrainian forces really aren't engaging in conventional warfare at all in the Kursk Oblast. This is not conquest of territory, for any functional purpose, since, they don't really have secure control of anything. This is straightforward guerrilla activity.

Now, guerrilla warfare can be highly effective, under the right circumstances. If the local population supports a widespread guerrilla war, such activity can, over a very long period of time, thoroughly undermine an established regime, and, potentially, overthrow that regime. We have seen this in Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc.

However, there is no local support here. The Ukrainians are actually engaging in guerrilla warfare on the enemy's territory, at great cost to themselves in terms of manpower and resources. They are an irritant, and, they have been constrained and confined. True, they would be hard to remove. However, in time, they're likely to simply die out or be bombed out of existence, having no local support, and being on their own.

All this really illustrates, is that Ukraine is no longer able to engage in conventional warfare against the Russians, but, has been reduced to disruptive guerrilla tactics, that don't actually take or control any territory, at all. And, that probably signals the beginning of the end of Ukraine as an independent nation, don't you think?