Ukraine establishes military office in Russia as incursions increase

According to its top military commander, Ukraine has established a military administrative office in Russia’s Kursk region, where it continues its surprise incursion into Russian territory.

General Oleksandr Syrsky said the office would “maintain law and order” and “meet the immediate needs” of the area’s population.

In a video posted on social media, General Syrsky tells a meeting chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the office was created “in the territories controlled by Ukraine.”

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said that Moscow would send reinforcements to “protect” the population of the region.

Ukraine also said it had made further progress in its incursion on Thursday.

Ukrainian troops were located 35 km inside the Kursk region, where they control 1,150 sq km of territory, including 82 settlements, General Syrsky said.

Now in its tenth day, this is Ukraine’s deepest incursion into Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

But Kiev has said it is not interested in “grabbing” Russian territory.

Instead, the incursion is an attempt to pressure Moscow into agreeing to “restore a just peace,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tykhy told reporters on Wednesday.

In light of the incursion, Russian officials have laid out plans for “additional measures” to safeguard the population and infrastructure in areas bordering Ukraine.

According to a video posted on the Telegram channel of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the measures concern improving the “management of troops” in the Belgorod region, bordering Kursk.

The Interfax news agency said the plan would also apply to the Kursk and Bryansk regions. All three border Ukraine.

Russia has also declared a federal emergency in the Belgorod region. On Monday, 11,000 people were evacuated from the Krasnaya Yaruga district of Belgorod, according to Russia’s state news agency Tass.

Despite this, Moscow also claims to have regained some of the lost territory. In a statement, the Defense Ministry said it had regained control of the Krupets settlement in the Kursk region.

The developments come as a British source confirmed to the BBC that tanks donated by the UK had been used during the Russian incursion into Ukraine.

The UK Ministry of Defence has not made an official statement on which specific British weapons were used by Ukraine, but the department reiterated that Ukraine had a “clear right” to use UK-supplied weapons in “self-defence against unlawful attacks by Russia”.

The UK was one of the first countries to supply modern Western tanks to Ukraine, donating 14 Challenger 2 tanks last year. But that was in response to a Ukrainian offensive to retake its territory.

The Ministry of Defense insisted that there had been no change in policy.

The Ukrainian incursion also uses military equipment supplied by the United States and Germany.

None of these countries objected to the use of their own equipment in the offensive. But given the secrecy surrounding the operation, few could have known Ukraine’s intentions in advance.

There may still be concerns in the West about what happens next. Not just that Ukraine may suffer significant losses and come back for more. But more importantly, there will be some who may worry about how Russia will respond.

The Kremlin has already accused the West of being behind the attack on its territory. The fact that Western weapons were involved could be seen as evidence of that accusation.

Escalation is always a cause for concern when it involves a nuclear-armed state, and the Kremlin has not been afraid to swing its nuclear saber from time to time.

But it also set many red lines that have already been crossed.

First, he warned the West not to supply tanks to Ukraine. That warning was ultimately ignored.

There is, however, one major restriction. No Western country has given Kiev the green light to use its long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

Britain, France and the United States have provided some, but with the caveat that they must be used inside Ukraine. That includes Crimea.

President Zelensky has repeatedly called for these reservations to be lifted.