Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday praised the speed with which his troops occupied new territory in neighboring Ukraine.
Speaking to schoolchildren, he said Ukraine’s attempt to halt the advance of Russian troops in the Donbass with a counterattack in the Kursk region had been in vain.
“We are not talking about advancing 200 or 300 meters,” Putin said, according to Russian news agencies. “We have not had this kind of pace of the offensive in Donbass for a long time.”
The Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine are collectively known as Donbass. Moscow unilaterally announced the annexation of the two regions in 2022, but does not fully control them and heavy fighting continues.
On his way to Mongolia, Putin stopped in the Siberian republic of Tuva to teach a subject introduced only after the war: “Conversations on Important Matters.” The propaganda-laden lessons are designed to familiarize children with the Kremlin’s political agenda.
Putin repeated the claim that the war he ordered against Ukraine was intended to defend his own country.
“We protect both the people living in Donbass and the future of Russia, because we cannot afford to have hostile structures created under our noses that harbor aggressive plans against our country,” he said. Putin was apparently referring to Kiev’s hopes of joining NATO.
Putin called the Ukrainian soldiers involved in the counterattack in Russia’s Kursk region “bandits” with whom Russia must deal.
Ukrainian forces still hold the initiative in the Kursk region, partly because Russia has refrained from withdrawing soldiers from the main attack area in Donetsk to repel the Kursk invasion.
New Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine
Russia launched a powerful wave of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine on Monday morning, targeting Kiev, Sumy and Kharkiv, officials said.
In the capital Kiev, two people were injured and the attacks caused damage in several neighborhoods, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.
Multiple fires broke out in western Kiev, damaging homes and vehicles. The windows of a metro station were broken, although the metro is still running, Klitschko wrote.
The Kiev military administration reported that the Russian army had sent cruise missiles and drones to attack Kiev. The cruise missiles were fired from Saratov, in Russia’s Volga region.
Ukraine’s air defense said it shot down about 10 cruise missiles and drones over Kiev. The military estimates that a total of nine ballistic missiles, 13 cruise missiles and 20 drones were shot down across the country.
Sumy, on the border with Russia, suffered greater damage than Kiev. Officials said 18 people were injured in Russian rocket attacks, including six children.
Five high-rise buildings and an educational institution were destroyed, police said. Sumy is opposite Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops had advanced during their counteroffensive in early August.
There were also reports of shelling in other regions of Ukraine, with Kharkiv, near the border, also being targeted by new attacks.
A woman was injured in a drone strike overnight, Governor Oleh Synegubov said.
Meanwhile, the city’s industrial area came under fire in the early hours of the morning, with a residential building and three other buildings in a garden area burned down, he said.
