Russia declared a state of emergency in the Kursk region late Wednesday as Ukrainian forces continued a cross-border attack there.
“To eliminate the consequences of enemy forces coming into the region, I took the decision to introduce a state of emergency in the Kursk region from Aug. 7,” the acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, said in a post on Telegram Wednesday evening.
The Russian military said clashes with Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region have been occurring since early Tuesday. The first reports of a Kyiv ground attack came from Smirnov, who wrote on Telegram about “attempted border breakthroughs” in the Sudzhansky and Korenevsky districts, and later claimed that Ukrainians had attacked Russian border force units at the settlements of Nikolayevo-Daryino and Oleshnya.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin called the incursion “a large-scale provocation.”
Ukraine has not officially commented on the military activity in Kursk, but Kyiv has announced a mandatory evacuation of 6,000 people in northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy, just across the border from Kursk. While not mentioning Kursk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Wednesday: “It is important to continue destroying our enemy … And the more pressure is exerted on Russia … the closer peace will be.”
Seeming to confirm Kyiv’s move into Kursk, Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko said late Wednesday that the Ukrainian army had established control over the Sudzha gas hub, which is about 8 kilometers from the border and represents the last major point for Russian gas still flowing into Europe.
Goncharenko added Thursday morning: “Kursk region. Day three. Everything is according to plan.”
“For the first time since World War II, a foreign army is conducting a combined arms operation on the territory of Russia and taking control of settlements,” Goncharenko said on Telegram.
Experts from the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War on Wednesday said the advance of Ukrainian troops was up to 10 kilometers deep into Kursk, based on an analysis of available data.
Information from Thursday indicated Ukrainian forces are in the Russian town of Sudzha, with reports of Ukrainian troops spotted as fas as the village of Ivnitsa, about 24 km inside Russia.
Ukrainian incursions into Russian territory have been rare since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago. This week’s advance has sparked alarm in the Kremlin.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urged Russian forces to capture Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on his Telegram channel after the attack. “This is no longer just an operation to retake our official territories and punish the Nazis. It is possible and necessary to go to the lands of the still existing Ukraine. To Odesa, to Kharkiv, to Dnipropetrovsk, to Mykolaiv. To Kyiv and beyond,” Medvedev wrote.
“The current military campaign will also end in Russia’s unconditional victory,” Medvedev added on X.
The goal of the Ukrainian operation is still unclear, but it has thrown Russian forces into disarray.
“It’s good that Ukraine is taking actions that surprise the Russians,” retired Polish General Roman Polko, the former commander of Poland’s special forces, told the Polish Press Agency. “Ukraine is in a defensive position and is unable to conduct an operation to push Russia from the occupied regions, but Ukraine is defending itself in an active way … One can’t allow the Russians to comfortably prepare new attacks.”
He said he has heard words of caution from Ukraine’s allies that Kyiv may have crossed a red line by attacking inside Russia. “You can’t be a boxer and fight in the ring with one arm tied behind your back,” the general added.
According to Smirnov, the Kursk governor, prominent pro-war reporter and propagandist Evgeniy Poddubnyy was wounded in the fighting in the region and transferred to a hospital in Moscow.
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