Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged for the first time late Saturday that Kyiv’s military is conducting a cross-border offensive inside Russian border areas.
Ukraine’s military was progressing in its campaign “to push the war out into the aggressor’s territory,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Saturday night.
“Ukraine is proving that it really knows how to restore justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed — pressure on the aggressor,” he said.
Zelenskyy had not mentioned Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russia before, but the Russian military had said clashes with Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region had been occurring since early Tuesday.
The Ukrainian operation is Kyiv’s deepest penetration into Russian territory since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Ukrainian advance “a large-scale provocation.”
Moscow on Saturday was rushing reinforcement troops and military equipment to Kursk and two other regions bordering Ukraine where Kyiv’s forces have pushed its offensive. The Russian government also implemented emergency security measures in the three regions — Bryansk, Belgorod and Kursk.
Russian tanks have taken up firing positions in the Kursk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said, according to a Tass report. Russia was fighting intense skirmishes on Saturday against thousands of Ukrainian troops as deep as 20 kilometers inside the Kursk region, according to media reports.
In Ukraine, the capital of Kyiv and several other areas came under a Russian drone and missile attack in the early hours of Sunday, the BBC reported, citing local officials.
The post Ukraine’s Zelenskyy confirms Kyiv’s forces fighting in Russian territory appeared first on Politico.
