Ukraine’s military has taken control of 28 towns and villages in Russia’s Kursk border region, prompting a sixth of its population to flee the incursion, the acting regional governor told President Vladimir Putin.
More than 120,000 people have left their homes and about 60,000 more are waiting to be evacuated, Alexey Smirnov told Putin and Russia’s top security officials during a televised meeting on Monday. Ukrainian forces have penetrated at least 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) into Russia and control a border area at least 40 kilometers wide, though there’s “no clear understanding” of where their troops are, he said.
The frank assessment of the scale of the Ukrainian intervention prompted Putin to interrupt the governor, telling him to focus on “helping people” and leave the military to assess the battlefield situation. The broadcast ended shortly afterward.
Putin said the Defense 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 acknowledged fighting could spread further in Russia, telling the governor of neighboring Bryansk region that if things were calm there now “it doesn’t mean the situation will remain the same tomorrow.”
Ukraine would continue attacks to try to destabilize the political situation in the country, Putin said. The government in Kyiv was attempting to stop Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine and was “striving to improve its negotiating positions in the future,” he said.
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 that was supposed to end within days and is now well into its third year.
Officials in Kyiv have been tight-lipped about the goals of their operation. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Saturday that Army Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi was keeping him informed about “our actions to push the war out into the aggressor‘s territory” without offering more details.
“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.
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