Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region is an attempt by Kyiv to stop Moscow’s offensive in the Donbas region.
Speaking at a meeting with top security and defence officials, Mr Putin said the attack that began last Tuesday appeared to reflect Kyiv’s attempt to gain a better negotiating position in future talks.
He argued that Ukraine may have hoped to destabilise the domestic situation in Russia, adding that it has failed to achieve the goal, and that the number of volunteers to join the Russian military has increased.
He said the Russian military has pushed its offensive in the Donbas and vowed that Moscow will achieve its military goals.
It came after an official in the Kursk border region of Russia urged more residents to evacuate because of the “very tense situation” in the area, where Russian forces are still scrambling to respond to a surprise Ukrainian attack after almost a week of fierce fighting.
Russia’s emergency authorities say more than 76,000 people have fled their homes in areas of Kursk, where Ukrainian troops and armour poured across the border on August 6, reportedly driving as deep as 30 kilometres (19 miles) into Russia and sowing alarm.
The governor of the Belgorod region adjacent to Kursk also announced the evacuation of people from a district near the Ukrainian border, describing Monday morning as “alarming” but giving no detail.
Ukrainian forces swiftly rolled into the town of Sudzha about 10 kilometres (six miles) over the border after launching the attack.
They reportedly still hold the western part of the town, which is the site of an important natural gas transit station.
The Ukrainian operation is taking place under tight secrecy, and its goals – especially whether Kyiv’s forces aim to hold territory or are staging a raid – remain unclear.
The stunning manoeuvre that caught the Kremlin’s forces unawares counters Russia’s unrelenting effort in recent months to punch through Ukrainian defences at selected points along the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has seen previous incursions into its territory during the nearly two-and-a-half year war, but the foray into the Kursk region marked the largest attack on its soil since the Second World War, embarrassing Mr Putin and 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 has delivered a blow to Mr Putin’s efforts to pretend that life in Russia has largely remained unaffected by the war.
State propaganda has 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 Mr 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.
He noted that while the military has set up minefields in the border region, it has failed to deploy enough troops to block enemy raids.
“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.”
Pasi Paroinen, an analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group open-source intelligence agency, which monitors the war, said the toughest phase of Ukraine’s incursion is likely to begin now as Russian reserves enter the fray.
He said that “if the Ukrainians are going to advance any further from where they are now, it’s going to be a tough battle, unlike the opening moments of this offensive”.
Ukraine’s progress on Russian territory “is challenging the operational and strategic assumptions” of the Kremlin’s forces, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
It could compel Russia to deploy more military assets to the long border between the two countries, the Washington-based think tank said in an assessment late on Sunday.
It described the Russian forces responding to the incursion as “hastily assembled and disparate”.
In other developments:
– The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said a fire near Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had “no impact” on the facility’s safety.
Radiation levels are unchanged at what is one of the 10 biggest nuclear plants in the world, the UN body said.
Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the blaze at a cooling tower outside the plant’s perimeter, and the IAEA chief said late on Sunday that the war continues to imperil the Zaporizhzhia facility.
“These reckless attacks endanger nuclear safety at the plant and increase the risk of a nuclear accident. They must stop now,” Rafael Mariano Grossi said.
