Officials in Moscow have announced a “tough response” as a major Ukrainian offensive on Russian territory enters its sixth day.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of “intimidate[ing]the peaceful population of Russia” with the offensive, which began on Tuesday.
Kiev’s troops have now advanced 30 kilometers into Russia, the deepest and most significant Ukrainian incursion since the war began in February 2022. Thousands of troops are said to be involved in the operation.
President Volodymyr Zelensky directly acknowledged the attack for the first time, telling Ukrainians that his forces were moving the war to “the territory of the aggressor.”
“Ukraine proves that it can indeed restore justice and exert the necessary pressure on the aggressor,” Zelensky said.
He then thanked Ukraine’s “warriors” and said he had discussed the operation in Russia with the country’s top military commander, General Oleksandr Syrskyi.
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP that thousands of troops were taking part in the operation, far more than the small incursion Russian border guards initially reported.
While Ukrainian-backed sabotage groups occasionally carry out cross-border attacks, the Kursk offensive is the largest coordinated attack on Russian territory by Kiev’s conventional forces.
“We are on the offensive. The aim is to expand the enemy’s positions, inflict maximum losses and destabilize the situation in Russia, as they are unable to protect their own border,” the official said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its forces “thwarted attempts by enemy mobile groups with armored vehicles to break deep into Russian territory.”
But the Defense Ministry admitted that Kiev troops have now advanced deep into the Kursk border region, reporting that fighting with Ukrainian troops took place near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, which are about 25 km and 30 km from the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Ukrainian forces claim to have captured a number of settlements in the Kursk region. In Guevo, a village about 3 km inside Russia, soldiers filmed themselves removing the Russian flag from an administrative building.
Footage has also emerged of Ukrainian troops capturing administrative buildings in Sverdlikovo and Poroz, while heavy fighting is reported in Sudzha, a town of about 5,000 people.
Ukrainian troops have already filmed themselves outside Suja, at a major gas facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine. This transit has continued despite the war.
In Sumy, which borders the Kursk region, BBC reporters saw a steady stream of armored vehicles and tanks heading toward Russia.
The armored convoys are marked with white triangular insignia, ostensibly to distinguish them from hardware used in Ukraine itself. Meanwhile, aerial photos have emerged showing Ukrainian tanks fighting in Russia.
Russia reports that 76,000 people have been evacuated from border areas in the Kursk region, where a state of emergency has been declared by local authorities.
The region’s acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, also reported that 15 people were injured on Saturday night when the wreckage of a downed Ukrainian missile fell on an apartment building in the regional capital of Kursk.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP, praised the operation, saying it “brings us much closer to peace than a hundred peace summits”.
“If Russia has to fight back on its own soil, if the Russian people flee, if people care about them, then that is the only way to show that they have to stop this war,” he told the BBC.
The Kursk offensive follows weeks of Russian advances in the east, which saw a series of villages captured by Kremlin forces.
Some analysts have suggested that the attack on Kursk is part of an attempt to force Russia to withdraw troops from eastern Ukraine and relieve pressure on beleaguered Ukrainian defenses.
But the Ukrainian official told AFP there has been little slowdown in Russian operations in the east so far.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the offensive a “major provocation.”
Moscow has already hit back at the Ukrainian attack, with emergency services in Kiev reporting that a man and his four-year-old son were killed in a rocket attack on the capital overnight.
Air defenses also destroyed 53 of 57 attack drones launched by Russia during the night’s airstrikes, air force officials said. Four North Korean-made missiles were also fired as part of the barrage, they said.
Russia is forced to turn to the isolated Asian country to replenish its ammunition supplies, with the US claiming huge amounts of military equipment have been delivered from Pyongyang.
