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Ukraine carried out a shocking counter-invasion of Russia last week.
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US officials told the Wall Street Journal that Russia is withdrawing troops from Ukraine in response.
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U.S. officials said the size of the withdrawal was unclear. Officials in Kiev said it was a “relatively small” number of units.
Russia is withdrawing some of its troops from Ukraine in response to Ukraine’s counter-reaction-invasion to Russia which started last week, the Wall Street Journal they reported Tuesday, citing anonymous US officials.
Political Europe also reported Tuesday that an official in Kiev said a “relatively small” number of Russian units had been withdrawn to respond to the Kursk incursion. U.S. officials told the Journal it was still unclear how many troops Russia was withdrawing from Ukraine.
The State Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Ukraine launched a shocking invasion of Russia beginning around August 6, sending troops into the Kursk region, Kiev said this week Ukrainian troops had nearly 400 square miles of Russian territory in a matter of days — that’s almost as much as Russia has seized from Ukraine this year. Business Insider was unable to independently verify how much territory Ukraine seized.
Ukraine has not said much about the raid. In a speech on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian shells were fired into Ukraine from the Kursk region and called the operation a “security issue,” according to Political Europe.
“It is only fair to destroy Russian terrorists where they are, where they carry out their attacks,” Zelenskyy said. He also said Ukraine could build up its “exchange fund” for prisoners of war.
The ultimate end goal is not yet clear, military analysts have said that Kiev may be trying to gain negotiating leverage or relieve its forces elsewhere by taxing Russian resources, BI previously reported.
Ukraine could also have tried to Embarrass RussiaAlthough the Kremlin tried to downplay the attack, military analysts previously told BI’s Tom Porter that the attack dented Putin’s image as a strongman.
Putin even tried blame the west before the attack, saying the “peaceful” Russian people do not deserve to be invaded.
The US had a simple answer, with John KirbyThe White House national security adviser said Monday: “There’s a simple solution: He can just get out of Ukraine and leave it at that.”
Heorhiy Tykhi, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said the aim of the strike was to “save the lives of our people and protect the territory of Ukraine from Russian attacks,” the magazine reported.
“The sooner the Russian Federation agrees to restore a just peace, the sooner the attacks of the Ukrainian armed forces on the territory of the Russian Federation will stop,” he added.
Read the original article at Company Insider
