Joe McConnell
President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of launching “another major provocation” after defense officials said about 300 Ukrainian troops crossed into Russia’s Kursk region on Tuesday.
Fighting is reportedly ongoing in the area, with Moscow saying that troops, supported by 11 tanks and more than 20 armoured fighting vehicles, crossed the border near the town of Sudzha, 10km (six miles) from the front line.
Thousands of people have fled their homes in the region, officials said. Ukraine has yet to comment on the Russian accusations.
Speaking before a Security Council meeting in Moscow, Putin accused Ukrainian forces of “indiscriminately firing” at civilian buildings and residences.
Fighting reportedly erupted in several villages on Russian soil on Tuesday. It was followed by Ukrainian airstrikes that killed three civilians and continued into the night, Russian authorities said.
Moscow said that twenty-four people, including six children, were injured in Ukrainian shelling in the border region.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that it had prevented the Ukrainian Armed Forces from advancing “deep into Russian territory” in the Kursk region and claimed to have destroyed several Ukrainian drones overnight.
However, numerous air traffic warnings continued to be issued in Kursk, local authorities urged residents to limit their travel, and all public events were cancelled.
Footage posted online, and verified by the BBC, showed fighter jets flying low over the region on Tuesday, with smoke rising from some areas on the ground.
Acting regional governor Alexei Smirnov said he had briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin on the situation, which he said was under control.
Mr Smirnov also said that several thousand people had fled the embattled areas of the region and that doctors from Moscow and St Petersburg were arriving to offer assistance.
Kiev has not yet commented on any of the reports on the Kursk events.
A Ukrainian army colonel, Vladislav Seleznyov, told the popular Nexta channel that the attack was “preemptive”, as around 75,000 Russian soldiers continued to gather near the border.
After a major cross-border incursion by Russia into the northeastern Kharkiv region in May, there were fears that Moscow would attempt to do the same in the Sumy region further north.
Now that Ukraine appears to have captured several settlements and highways in the opposite direction, it is possible that such ambitions have been frustrated – for now.
However, since the Ukrainian armed forces are already overstretched and outnumbered, some military analysts question the wisdom of such cross-border incursions.
This is not the first incursion into Russia by fighters based in Ukraine. Several anti-Kremlin Russian groups launched raids last year, which were repelled.
In March, the armed forces again entered the Belgorod and Kursk regions, where they clashed with Russian security forces.
