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Kyiv: Vladimir Putin abruptly interrupted an acting regional governor who said Ukraine’s military had taken control of 28 towns and villages in Russia’s Kursk border region, prompting a sixth of its population to flee.
Alexey Smirnov said Ukrainian forces had penetrated at least 12 kilometres into the region and controlled a border area 40 kilometres wide before Putin cut him off at a televised meeting with defence officials, saying this was a matter for the military to assess.
“You can tell us about the socio-economic situation and about helping people,” Putin told Smirnov, who went on to list assistance provided to more than 120,000 residents he said had left their homes in the region, with about 60,000 more waiting to be evacuated.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the scale of the intervention in a video report from his war cabinet posted on Telegram on Monday. It was the first time he confirmed that the Ukrainian military was operating inside the Kursk region. On Telegram, he praised his country’s soldiers and commanders “for their steadfastness and decisive actions”.
He did not elaborate. He also suggested that Ukraine would offer humanitarian assistance in the region.
Army Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told the president in the video “as of now nearly 1000 square kilometres of Russian Federation territory are under our control” and that offensive operations are continuing in the Kursk region.
Putin said the Russian Defence Ministry’s main task was to “drive out the enemy from our territories and, together with the Border Service, ensure reliable protection of the state border.”
He admitted fighting could spread further in Russia, telling the governor of the neighbouring Bryansk region that if things were calm there now “it doesn’t mean the situation will remain the same tomorrow.”
Putin said Ukraine may have hoped that the attack would cause public unrest in Russia, but that it has failed to achieve that goal, and he claimed that the number of volunteers to join the Russian military has increased because of the assault. He said Russian forces will carry on with their offensive in eastern Ukraine regardless.
Russia has sent reinforcements to try to quell Ukraine’s surprise cross-border attack, the first time since World War II that a foreign military has taken control of part of its territory. It’s the biggest assault within Russia since Putin ordered the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine which was supposed to end within days and is now well into its third year.
“The Russians have been severely embarrassed,“said Matthew Savill, military sciences director at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Still, “sustaining a force of any size in Russia, and defending against counter-attacks, will be hard, given the limited reserves available” to Ukraine.
Russia has seen previous incursions into its territory during the nearly 2½-year war, but the foray into the Kursk region marked the largest attack on its soil since World War II, constituting a milestone in the hostilities. It is also the first time the Ukrainian army has spearheaded an incursion, rather than pro-Ukraine Russian fighters.
The advance delivered a blow to Putin’s efforts to pretend that life in Russia has been largely unaffected by the war. State propaganda tried to play down the attack, emphasising the authorities’ efforts to help residents of the region and seeking to distract attention from the military’s failure to prepare for the attack and quickly repel it.
Kursk residents recorded videos lamenting that they had to flee the border area, leaving behind their belongings, and pleading with Putin for help. But Russia’s state-controlled media kept a tight lid on any expression of discontent.
Retired General Andrei Gurulev, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, criticised the military for failing to properly protect the border.
“Regrettably, the group of forces protecting the border didn’t have its own intelligence assets,” he said on his messaging app channel. “No one likes to see the truth in reports, everybody just wants to hear that all is good.”
The combat inside Russia rekindled questions about whether Ukraine was using weaponry supplied by NATO members.
Though it’s not clear what weapons Ukraine is using across the border, Russian media widely reported that American Bradley and German Marder armoured infantry vehicles were there. The claim could not be independently verified.
Ukraine has already used US weapons to strike inside Russia.
Bloomberg, AP