Some 300 Ukrainian soldiers conducted an incursion across the border into Russia, engaging in combat inside Moscow’s territory on Tuesday morning local time, according to the Kremlin.
Although Moscow originally claimed it pushed back the incursion, the assault has continued into Wednesday, with Russian military bloggers claiming that fighting has spread further into Russia and reached the village of Sverdlov, some 15 kilometres from the border. The Russian defence ministry confirmed that fighting was still ongoing at midday on Wednesday.
Members of Ukraine’s 22nd mechanised brigade launched an attack between the border villages of Nikolayev-Daryino and Olesya in the Kursk region of Russia, supported by “11 tanks and more than 20 armoured fighting vehicles,” the ministry said. The clashes originally extended as far as the outskirts of Sudzha, a town of some 5,000 people about 10 kilometres from the border near Ukraine’s region of Sumy.
The assault was backed by drones and missile strikes, according to Moscow. At least five civilians were killed, and some 28 were injured, mostly in Sudzha and Korenevo districts, Russian state-owned news agency Tass said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called a meeting with his security officials on Wednesday in response to the incursion, labelling the attack as a “large-scale provocation.” He also accused Ukrainian forces of attacking civilian targets. None of the claims or casualty reports could be independently confirmed.
‘Russia is not in control’
Kyiv did not immediately comment on the alleged incursion. However, Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council official Andrii Kovalenko said Russia was not in control of its border.
“Russian military commanders lie about controlling the situation in Kursk Oblast,” Kovalenko wrote in the Telegram post. This is not the first time Ukrainian forces have entered Russian territory. In March, exiled pro-Ukraine Russian fighters attacked Belgorod and Kursk regions but were pushed back with no gains to show. Questions remain over the benefits of similar actions, aside from shock value and forcing parts of Russian troops to move troops from elsewhere to bolster their defences back home.
President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of launching
“another major provocation,” after defence officials said Ukrainian troops crossed into Russia’s Kursk region on Tuesday. Moscow said troops, supported by 11 tanks and more than 20 armoured combat vehicles, crossed the border near the town of Sudzha, 10 km (six miles) from the frontline. In televised remarks broadcast on Wednesday afternoon, Russia’s Chief of General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, told President Putin that the “advance” into the Kursk region had been stopped with Russian forces “continuing to destroy the adversary in areas directly adjacent to the Russian-Ukrainian border.”.
Mr. Gerasimov also said that up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops had entered the region with the aim of taking over the area around the town of Sudzha and that Russian forces had already killed 100 men and injured another 215. Ukraine has yet to comment on the Russian allegations. Speaking ahead of a meeting of the Security Council in Moscow, Mr. Putin accused Ukrainian forces of “firing indiscriminately” at civilian buildings and residences. Fighting reportedly took place in various villages on Russian territory throughout Tuesday. It was followed by Ukrainian air attacks, which killed three civilians and continued into the night, Russian authorities said.
Twenty-four people, including six children, have been wounded in Ukrainian shelling of the border region, Moscow said. On Wednesday, Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed it prevented the Ukrainian Armed Forces from advancing “deep into Russian territory” in the Kursk region and said it had destroyed several Ukrainian drones overnight.
Footage posted online—and verified by the—showed fighter jets flying low overhead in the region on Tuesday, with smoke rising from areas on the ground. However, a number of air alerts continued to be issued in Kursk, where local authorities urged residents to limit their movements and all public events were cancelled. The acting regional governor, Alexei Smirnov, said he had briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin about the situation, which he said was under control.
Mr. Smirnov also said several thousand people had left areas of the region that were under attack and added doctors from Moscow and St. Petersburg were on their way to offer assistance. Kyiv has not yet commented on any of the reports about events in Kursk. However, on Wednesday, Volodymyr Artyukh, the head of the Ukrainian region of Sumy, ordered the evacuation of the areas that border the region of Kursk.
One colonel in Ukraine’s military, Vladislav Seleznyov, told the prominent Nexta channel the attack was “preventative,” with an estimated 75,000 Russian troops continuing to gather close to the border. After a major cross-border incursion by Russia into the north-eastern Kharkiv region in May, there had been fears Moscow would attempt the same into the Sumy region further north.
With Ukraine now apparently capturing several settlements and highways the other way, those ambitions may well have been frustrated for now.
But with Ukrainian forces already overstretched and outmanned, some military analysts are questioning the wisdom of such cross-border raids. This isn’t the first incursion into Russia by fighters based in Ukraine. Some groups of anti-Kremlin Russians launched raids last year, which were repelled. The forces crossed into the Belgorod and Kursk regions again in March, where they engaged in clashes with Russian security forces.
Stay connected with Fact and US for more such news.