Three weeks into Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region, Moscow’s response has been lackluster, AP reported. The reason for the muted response comes down to two factors, the news agency suggested: manpower and priorities.

Moscow has committed the bulk of its forces to offensive operations in the Donbas region and seems reluctant to redeploy them to tackle an incursion President Vladimir Putin has downplayed, AP wrote citing analysts.

“Putin’s focus is on the collapse of the Ukrainian state, which he believes will automatically render any territorial control irrelevant,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Moscow illegally annexed four Ukrainian provinces – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – early in the war, and exercising territorial control over them is key to Russia’s rulers, AP said. Putin has said Ukraine must withdraw completely from the four provinces in order for any peace talks to start, a condition Kyiv has rejected. “In marshaling forces to meet Ukraine’s incursion, Russia is doing all it can to avoid drawing units from its own offensive in the Donbas,” Nigel Gould-Davies of the International Institute of Strategic Studies was quoted by the agency as saying. “Russia currently judges that it can contain the threat on its own soil without compromising its most important goal in Ukraine.”

Some of the fiercest fighting in recent weeks has been for control of the strategically important town of Pokrovsk.

“Russia is very keen on continuing the attacks toward Pokrovsk and not taking resources away from Pokrovsk to Kursk,” said Nico Lange, senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis.