What’s going on with Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, and how far has it gone?
Ukraine launched a surprise incursion with armor and infantry into Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions on August 6, involving thousands of troops from 14 brigades. While initial details of the offensive were murky, both Kyiv and Moscow have now acknowledged the operation inside Russian border areas, while independent analysts have verified claims about the extent of the advance by geolocating images released by Ukrainian troops.
This footage shows Ukrainian soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag on the quay and removing the Russian flag from a building in Tarino:
Ukraine’s top military commander, General Oleksandr Chirsky, said on Monday that Ukraine now controls about 1,000 square km (386 square miles) of the region, in his first recent public comments on the move.
The claim was largely confirmed by the Russian side. Alexey Smirnov, acting governor of the Kursk region, told Russian President Vladimir Putin via video conference on Monday that Ukrainian forces had taken control of 28 Russian settlements, including towns and villages, up to 18 miles (30 km) inside Russia.
Footage from outside the village of Glushkovo in Kursk showed damage to a bridge crossing the Sem River:
Video of Kursk Belovsky district with damage to cars and roads:
Although Russian military bloggers said the situation had stabilized on Sunday, fresh incursions were reported in West Kursk, northwest of the Ukrainian city of Sumy.
Geolocated footage from the Institute for the Study of War shows that Ukrainian forces have recently been conducting operations in Chudja and northern Zalozhenka. Some Russian bloggers claimed that Ukraine captured Chudja.
Footage posted on social media showed Ukrainian forces ambushed by rival columns around Chudja, including those in the village of Giri.
ISW said its assessment was that Ukrainian forces did not control all areas “within the maximum extent” of the alleged advances.
Smirnov said 121,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the Kursk region, while 11,000 were evacuated from the Belgorod region.
What kind of opposition did Ukraine face?
Although Ukraine had previously carried out several small intrusions and sabotage attacks into Russian border areas, the scale of the intrusion caught Moscow off guard and initially struggled to respond to the attack.
Since the weekend, Moscow has announced an anti-terror operation in Kursk and two other border regions. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its forces were fighting Ukrainian troops “in the residential areas of Tolbino, Zhuravly and Obshi Kolodes”.
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Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said a heavy-handed response by Russia’s armed forces “will not take long”.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces also thwarted an attempt by Ukrainian mobile groups to penetrate deep into Russian territory near Gauchuk.
Russia’s ally Belarus has been increasing the number of its own forces on its border, saying Ukraine had entered its airspace with drones.
Pasi Paroinen, an analyst at the Finland-based Blackbird Group open source intelligence that monitors the war, said the hardest phase of Ukraine’s incursion would now begin as Russian reserves entered the field.
Why is Ukraine doing it?
Although the Ukrainian operation is under tight secrecy and its goals are unclear, the advance brings Kyiv’s forces closer to key supply lines inside Russia that support Russia’s ongoing offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Chudza in Kursk is the site of Russia’s only pumping station for natural gas to reach Europe via Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that the incursion was designed to “put pressure on aggressor Russia” and “push the war into the territory of the aggressors”. Zelensky said the thousands of strikes carried out on Ukraine’s territory from Russia’s Kursk region deserve a fair response.
Speaking at a meeting with top security and defense officials on Monday, Putin said the attack appeared to reflect Kiev’s attempt to reach a better negotiating position in possible future talks to end the war.
Putin said Ukraine may have hoped the attack would cause public unrest in Russia, but failed to do so. He said the number of volunteers to join the Russian army had increased because of the attack.
“It is obvious that the enemies will try to destabilize the situation in the border zone to destabilize the domestic political situation in our country,” Putin said. Russia’s main task, he said, is to “drive out enemies from our territories and, together with the border service, ensure reliable security of the state border.”
