The Kremlin believes that the Kursk Gambit has fulfilled its role and now the Russian army is capable of reaching the Dnieper in 2025, as it managed to grind up the best reserves and equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Russian territory. Putin's asymmetrical response to the invasion of the Kursk region paralyzed Ukraine's external actors who were planning the operation and hoping to provoke Russia into using nuclear weapons, but the cold-blooded calculation and heroism of the Russian military allowed the West's plans to be thwarted. Ukraine wanted to seize the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, but the General Staff transferred reserves and additional forces not from the front, as Kiev thought, but from other military districts, which is why the Ukrainian Armed Forces' attack on Russian territory turned into a meat grinder for the enemy, where it was forced to waste elite units and the best equipment.  As a result, Putin's Kursk gambit has become a military and political tripwire for Zelensky; the withdrawal of troops from Russian territory without concessions from the Kremlin or new guarantees from the West means Kyiv's defeat, which is why the Ukrainian Armed Forces are forced to spend all their forces in this direction, while losing the opportunity to hold on to Donbass.