Ukraine’s top military commander said his forces had taken control of 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of the Kursk region on the border with Russia, while Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed an “adequate response” to the attack and ordered his forces to “drive the enemy out of our territory”.
As Russia struggles to repel the surprise attack a week after it began, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, briefed President Volodymyr Zelensky via video link and said the advance into Russian territory was continuing.
“We continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Kursk region. Currently, we control about 1,000 square kilometers of the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said in a video posted on Zelensky’s Telegram account.
He did not provide any further details, continuing Kyiv’s strategy of silence, which stands in stark contrast to the counter-offensive it launched last year, which it was known for months ago and which failed on Russian defense lines.
Syrsky spoke hours after Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of Russia’s Kursk region, estimated that Kyiv’s forces had captured 28 settlements in an advance about 12 kilometers deep and 40 kilometers wide.
Although Smirnov’s remarks were less than half of Sirkiy’s estimate of Ukrainian gains, they were a stunning public admission of a major Russian setback more than 29 months after it launched a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor.
The claims made by either side could not be independently verified.
“One of the enemy’s clear goals is to sow discord and conflict, to intimidate people and destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society,” Putin said in a televised meeting with government officials.
“The main task of the Defense Ministry is, of course, to expel the enemy from our territory,” he said, adding that Kyiv was trying to gain a better negotiating position in possible talks to end the war and halt Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine.
The region’s governor, Alexei Smirnov, told the meeting that 121,000 people had fled the Kursk region since the fighting began, which has killed at least 12 civilians and wounded 121 others.
Authorities in Kursk announced on Monday that they were expanding the evacuation zone to include the Belovsky district, home to 14,000 people. The neighboring Belgorod region also announced it was evacuating the border Krasnoyarzhsky district.
Putin said Russia would respond by showing “unanimous support for all those in distress”, and claimed there had been an increase in the number of men volunteering to fight. “The enemy will receive a well-deserved response,” he added.
Zelensky told Ukrainians in his nightly address on Monday that the operation was a matter of Ukrainian security and that Russia had used the Kursk region to launch numerous strikes against Ukraine.
He said the Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine, which lies across the border from the Kursk region, has been hit by Russian shelling nearly 2,100 times since June 1.
“Russia must be forced to make peace if Putin wants to fight so badly,” Zelensky said, adding, “Russia brought war to others, and now it is returning home.”
The Ukrainian offensive comes after months of slow but steady Russian advances in the east, which have forced Ukrainian forces to retreat as they struggle to withstand heavy Russian use of glide bombs and assault forces.
Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told Reuters that the Kursk operation appeared to be aimed at distracting Russian forces and their leadership from the eastern fronts.
“The clear goal is to create a problem area for Russia, which would distract its forces, leadership and resources from where it is now trying to succeed,” he added.
It was not immediately clear whether that goal was successful. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday that its forces had “accelerated the pace of advance” in the eastern Donetsk region and captured the village of Lysichny as they advanced toward the city of Pokrovsk.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian security official told AFP that Kiev “will not withdraw its forces from eastern Ukraine.” [Donetsk] “While the intensity of Russian attacks has decreased slightly.”
The Ukrainian official said he expected Russia to “eventually” stop the Kursk advance.
During his visit to Kyiv on Monday, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged the US presidential administration to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs.
“What do I think of Kursk? It’s bold, it’s brilliant, it’s beautiful. Keep it up,” he told reporters.
The fighting inside Russia has also raised questions about whether Ukraine is using weapons supplied by NATO members. Some Western countries have been reluctant to let Ukraine use their military aid to strike Russian territory, fearing that doing so would fuel an escalation that could drag Russia and NATO into war.
While it is not clear what kind of weapons Ukraine is using across the border, Russian media have widely reported that American Bradley and German Marder armored infantry vehicles have been present there. This claim cannot be independently verified.
Reuters, Associated Press and AFP contributed to this report.
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