Ukraine said Wednesday its forces had advanced further into Russia’s Kursk region in the largest foreign incursion into Russia since World War II, posing a dilemma for President Vladimir Putin according to U.S. President Joe Biden.
Thousands of Ukrainian troops crossed the Russian border in the early hours of August 6 into the western Kursk region, in what Putin called a major provocation aimed at gaining a stronger position in possible future ceasefire negotiations.
Ukraine has captured part of Russia’s Kursk border region and although Putin has said the Russian military will push back Ukrainian troops, more than a week of intense fighting has yet to dislodge them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said kyiv’s forces continued to gain ground in the Kursk region and had taken an additional one to two kilometers on Wednesday.
“We continue to advance in the Kursk region,” Zelensky wrote in a statement on Telegram, “by one to two kilometers in different areas since the beginning of the day. And more than 100 Russian prisoners of war in the same period.”
NBC News was unable to independently verify the situation on the ground.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that 117 Ukrainian drones were shot down on its territory overnight, mainly in the Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod and Nizhny Novgorod regions. Missiles were also shot down and Sukhoi Su-34 bombers struck Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region.
Later, the ministry said Russian forces had repelled a series of Ukrainian attacks in the Kursk region, including at Russkoye Porechnoye, 18 km from the border, and pro-Russian war bloggers said the front had been stabilised.
The Ukrainian drone attack included strikes on four Russian military airfields aimed at undermining Russia’s ability to attack Ukraine with glide bombs, a Ukrainian security source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The Russian National Guard announced that it was stepping up security at the Kursk nuclear power plant, located just 35 km from the scene of the fighting.
The Ukrainian offensive into Russian territory has radically changed the narrative around the two-and-a-half-year-old war. Russia has been advancing in eastern Ukraine since Kiev’s failed counteroffensive in 2023, which failed to make major gains against Russian forces.
But Ukraine’s unprecedented incursion also carries major risks for Russia, Ukraine and the West, which wants to avoid a direct confrontation between Russia and the US-led NATO military alliance, which has helped arm kyiv against Moscow.
Biden said U.S. officials were in constant contact with Ukraine about the incursion, which he said “created a real dilemma” for Putin, who sent thousands of troops to Ukraine in February 2022.
The White House has said Ukraine did not warn Ukraine of the incursion and that the United States had nothing to do with it. Russian officials have suggested that Ukraine’s Western backers must have been aware of the attack.
“Of course they are involved,” Russian MP Maria Butina told Reuters. “It’s even worse when they say they don’t know anything and put all the blame on Ukraine.”
Russian state television said Russian forces were turning the tide against Ukrainian forces, showed footage of successful attacks on Ukrainian positions and extensively covered the evacuations of Russian civilians from the border area.
Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrskyi said the Russian city of Sudzha, a hub for Russian natural gas transiting through Ukraine to Europe, was fully under Ukrainian control. Natural gas continued to be pumped on Wednesday.
By bringing the war to Russia, Ukraine forced nearly 200,000 Russians to evacuate border regions near the site where, during World War II in 1943, the Red Army defeated Nazi forces in one of the largest tank battles the world had ever seen.
Putin said Monday that Ukraine, “with the help of its Western masters,” was seeking to improve kyiv’s negotiating position for possible peace talks.
But he questioned what negotiations could take place with an enemy he accuses of firing indiscriminately on civilians and Russian nuclear facilities.
The Russian ruble weakened against the dollar on Wednesday, losing 8.5% since the start of the Ukrainian incursion.
Russian officials say Ukraine is trying to show its Western backers that it can still mount major military operations, as pressure mounts on kyiv and Moscow to agree to talks about ending the conflict, the biggest in Europe since World War II.
Zelensky said the incursion was aimed at putting pressure on Russian forces and “restoring justice” after the Russian invasion.
The offensive carries risks for kyiv: Ukraine could expose other parts of its front by devoting forces to fighting on Russian sovereign territory. Russia controls 18% of Ukrainian territory and has been steadily advancing lately.
Russian military bloggers expect Ukraine to make at least one more major advance in the coming days. In the border region of Belgorod, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has declared a state of emergency across the region.
“The situation remains difficult,” Yuri Podolyaka, an influential pro-Russian military blogger of Ukrainian origin, said of the situation in Kursk.
“The enemy still has the initiative and therefore, albeit slowly, it is increasing its presence in the Kursk region.”
