Few were privy to the battle plans being hatched in the heart of the Ukrainian government for the largest foreign invasion on Russian soil since the Second World War.
At 3am on Tuesday, August 6, Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border into Russia in a highly co-ordinated assault that regained the battlefield initiative from Moscow.
The invasion of the Kursk region by several thousand of Kyiv’s troops may have changed the narrative of a slow, grinding attritional war in the east of the country — although it remains uncertain how much it could ultimately change the course of the conflict.
