Russia strikes back at Ukrainian forces in Kursk region after surprise invasion

Russian forces on Tuesday (13) hit back at Ukrainian troops with missiles, drones and air strikes in actions that a senior commander said halted Ukraine’s advance after the biggest attack on Russian sovereign territory since the start of the war.

Ukrainian soldiers stormed the Russian border a week ago in a surprise attack that Russian President Vladimir Putin said was aimed at improving Kiev’s negotiating position ahead of possible talks and slowing the advance of Russian forces on the front line.

Ukraine has seized a sliver of Russian territory, illustrating the weakness of Russia’s border defenses and prompting Moscow to evacuate at least 200,000 people while sending in reserves and imposing a security blockade.

Russian war bloggers reported intense battles on the Kursk front as Ukrainian forces try to expand their control, although they said Russia was bringing in soldiers and heavy weaponry and had repelled many of the Ukrainian attacks.

Russia’s Defense Ministry published footage of Sukhoi Su-34 bombers attacking what it said were Ukrainian troops in the Kursk border region and infantry attacking Ukrainian positions.

“The enemy’s uncontrolled march has already been stopped,” said Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces unit. “The enemy is already aware that the blitzkrieg they planned did not work out.”

It was not clear which side was in control of the Russian city of Sudzha, through which Russia pumps gas from Western Siberia through Ukraine and on to Slovakia and other European Union countries.

Gazprom said on Tuesday it was still pumping gas to Ukraine through Sudzha.

Kursk’s acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said on Monday that Ukraine controlled 28 settlements in the region, and the incursion was about 12 km deep and 40 km wide.

Ukraine, however, claimed it controlled 1,000 square kilometers of Russia, more than double the figure given by Smirnov. Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports.

Ukraine’s gamble on a bold foray into the world’s largest nuclear power carries risks for both Kiev and Moscow.

Bet on the border

After the Russian invasion in 2022, Western leaders said they would help Ukraine defeat Russian troops on the battlefield and drive them out. Ukraine recaptured large swathes of territory in 2022.

But Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive failed to penetrate deeply entrenched Russian lines, and Russian forces have been advancing deeper into Ukrainian territory this year.

At his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, outside Moscow, Putin told senior officials that Russia would expel Ukrainian troops and promised a “worthy response”, saying Russian forces were accelerating their advance on other parts of the front.

Still, the foreign occupation of Russian lands has been an embarrassment for the Russian military and for Putin, who appeared visibly impatient with at least one officer during a televised meeting on Monday.

Russia controls just under a fifth of the territory internationally recognized as Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians in a speech that the Russian operation was a matter of Ukrainian security and that the Kursk region had been used by Russia to launch many attacks against Ukraine.

But by devoting forces to Kursk, Ukraine could leave other parts of the front exposed, just as Russia has advanced. Russia, which has a much larger army, could try to encircle Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s Western backers, who were eager to avoid an escalation of the war into a direct confrontation between Russia and the NATO military alliance, said they had no advance warning of the Ukrainian offensive.

In Kursk, 121,000 people had already left or had been evacuated and another 59,000 were in the process of being evacuated, local officials said. In Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Kursk, 11,000 civilians were also evacuated, the region’s governor said.