Russia says it has spent a third day carrying out a wonderful Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk border region, which reports suggest may be one of the largest cross-border incursions undertaken into Kyiv during the war.
A Russian Defense Ministry official said the Russian military and border guards prevented Ukrainian forces from penetrating deeper into Russia’s southwestern region. He added that the army is attacking Ukrainian fighters seeking to advance towards dominance from the Ukrainian region of Sumy.
“Attempts to penetrate deep into the territory through individual groups in the direction of Kursk are repressed,” the ministry said.
Heavy fighting has been reported near the city of Sudzha, where Russian natural gas enters Ukraine, raising concerns about a possible sudden disruption of transit flows to Europe.
Oleksiy Goncharkeno, a Ukrainian lawmaker, said in a series of posts on Facebook and Telegram that Ukrainian forces had seized the Sudzha fuel hub.
“Our men heroically captured Putin’s number one fuel in Sudja,” Goncharenko said.
However, kyiv has officially commented on the obvious incursion into Kursk.
In a video addressed to the country on Thursday afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not mention the fighting in the Kursk region, but under pressure that “Russia has brought the war to our territory and is sorry for what it has done” .
“Ukrainians know how to achieve their goals,” Zelensky said, adding that on Thursday he received three “productive reports, precisely the kind that our country wants now” from the commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Russia says its military has slowed the Ukrainian advance in the border domain about 500 kilometers southwest of Moscow, but army bloggers and open source knowledge imply that Ukrainian troops have made progress in several areas of Kursk.
The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin via video link on the situation there on Thursday. Smirnov said the region is considering equipping fuel stations with electronic warfare equipment and offering them unspecified armored defense.
William Taylor, former US ambassador to Ukraine, saw several reasons why kyiv needs to take military action of the kind Russia says it is taking positions in Kursk.
“They want to. . . show that the Ukrainians can push the Russians back,” he told Power on Thursday
“That’s the only time they did this at the beginning of the war. No, they can still do it. “
Taylor said kyiv could also consider the option of possible negotiations with Russia, “and if the Ukrainians hold some of the territory, that will give them some leverage. “
Russia launched its all-out war on its neighbor in February 2022.
The fighting has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed key infrastructure in the country, as well as buildings and structures in towns and cities.
With information from Dennis Kovtun of CBC and Reuters
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