Heavy fighting has been going on for three days in Russia’s Kursk region as attempts to push Ukrainian troops out of the country continue, Moscow’s Defense Ministry said.
Russia reports that at least 1,000 Ukrainian troops, supported by tanks and armored vehicles, crossed the border on Tuesday.
About 3,000 people have been forced to leave the region as at least four people have been killed in ongoing military clashes, Kursk Deputy Governor Andrei Belostotsky said on Thursday.
Ukraine’s military has remained resolutely silent on the allegations, but a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky has blamed all the “military actions” on “unambiguous aggression by Russia”.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a longtime adviser to President Zelensky, added: “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably suffers the corresponding consequences.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said the advance and “breakthrough attempts” of Ukrainian army units in the Sudzhansky and Korenevsky districts of Kursk were thwarted by a joint effort of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the army.
The Kremlin said Ukraine had lost 660 servicemen since hostilities began in Kursk. Mr. Belostotsky claimed that Kiev’s troops had begun to withdraw from the region.
The BBC cannot verify the death toll in active conflicts, and the deaths reported by opponents are often not a true reflection of the situation on the ground.
In its update on Thursday, Moscow said Kiev had lost 82 units of armored vehicles, a much higher number than the initial report that 11 tanks and more than 20 armored vehicles had entered Russia near the city of Sudzha on Tuesday morning.
Also on Thursday, Russia suggested for the third day in a row that it had stopped Ukrainian troops from advancing on Kursk.
But on Wednesday, Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov said the “advance” toward the Kursk region had been halted, while Russian forces “continued to destroy the adversary in areas directly adjacent to the Russian-Ukrainian border.”
The FSB claimed something similar was happening on Tuesday, when the first reports of a possible Ukrainian raid emerged.
The Institute for the Study of War, a respected think tank, said in its latest report that localized images from the past two days have shown that Ukrainian armored vehicles have reached positions 10 km (6.2 miles) away from the Kursk region.
Meanwhile, BBC-verified footage in recent days showed fighter jets flying low over the region.
Russia’s military leadership is under intense scrutiny at home, as several popular and generally well-informed pro-war Telegram channels have reported that the situation on the ground is not as stable as the Kremlin suggests.
The influential, pro-war channel Rybar Telegram on Wednesday harshly criticized the highest ranks of the Russian military, saying that “for two months all information was sent to the useless headquarters” and that there was enough time “to make an appropriate decision.”
Rybar’s concerns were shared by several other pro-war bloggers.
Local leaders in regions bordering Kursk, both in Russia and Ukraine, ordered residents to evacuate the area after being notified of the raid.
On Wednesday, the head of Ukraine’s Sumy region, Volodymyr Artyukh, ordered the evacuation of areas bordering Kursk.
Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday in Russia’s Belgorod region that settlements in his province had been attacked by Ukrainian forces over the past 24 hours.
This is not the first incursion into Russia by fighters based in Ukraine. Some groups of anti-Kremlin Russians launched attacks last year, which were repelled.
In March, the troops again entered the Belgorod and Kursk regions, where they clashed with Russian security forces.
On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko said that the Ukrainian military had taken control of the Sudzha gas hub, a key gas facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine. This transit has been maintained despite the war.
It is the only entry point for Russian gas to the EU.
Gas was reportedly still flowing from Suja on Thursday.
The Russian National Guard said it has tightened security around the Kursk nuclear power plant, which is about 70 km (43 miles) northeast of Suja.
In recent months, Russia has been gaining ground in eastern Ukraine, as many of Kiev’s ground forces faced sustained attacks in the eastern Donbas region.
In a recent interview, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, said that the main offensive of the Russian forces “is expected to be over in a month and a half to two months.”
