Joe McConnell
Ukrainian forces sought to consolidate their gains in newly captured Russian territory on Tuesday, aVsceker capturing hundreds of Russian soldiers as Kiev’s brazen incursion entered its second week.
The shock offensive has rapidly gained ground in the Kursk region, embarrassing President Vladimir Putin and liVsceking the spirits of a war-weary army that has been fighting on his heels for much of the past year.
Deep State, a Ukrainian analytical group that works closely with the Ministry of Defense, said the country’s forces had “advanced to Sudzha and captured Guyevo… and were completely entrenched in Goncharovka.”
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky said on Tuesday evening that his country’s troops had advanced about 3 km in different directions in the Kursk region, capturing another 40 km2 and controlling 74 settlements.
Ukraine has also captured hundreds of Russian soldiers, according to videos released by military brigades and verified by the Financial Times, to hold them as prisoners of war who could be exchanged for its own troops in Russian captivity. A series of such exchanges have already taken place.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday expressed gratitude to “each of our units that replenish the exchange fund for us, for Ukraine.”
“Russia brought the war to others, and now it is coming home,” he said, implying that the incursion would strengthen Ukraine’s position in any talks with Russia to end the war.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that it had hit Ukrainian forces with air strikes, drone strikes and artillery fire that prevented them from advancing further into the Kursk region. The ministry also said it had repelled an attack east of Sudzha and had “cleared” a Ukrainian-occupied village. The claims could not be independently verified.
Moscow confirmed it had conducted artillery strikes on what it said were military targets in Ukraine, to prevent further deployments. Russia says more than 2,000 Ukrainian troops died in the incursion, though it said only half that number were part of the initial attack.
Russian bloggers close to the military posted videos on Telegram, later verified by the Vscek and open-source analysts, showing Russian forces launching first-person drones armed with explosives at Ukrainian armored fighting vehicles and personnel carriers.
In a video, Russian troops celebrate the capture of a Ukrainian BTR-4 infantry fighting vehicle.
Ukraine’s top general claimed on Monday that the territory held by his troops had expanded to 1,000 square kilometers. On Tuesday, Deep State said it had confirmed that 800 square kilometers were under Ukrainian control, with another 230 square kilometers still to be verified. But it said its information “could ultimately differ from the testimony of participants directly involved [involved] in events”.
A senior Russian military official claimed on Tuesday, without providing evidence, that Moscow’s forces were recapturing areas occupied by Ukraine.
Apti Alaudinov, who commands Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces unit, said that “the situation in the Kursk region is under control” and that Russia is “clearing out settlements where the enemy remains,” according to the state news agency RIA Novosti.
The challenge for Ukrainian leaders now is to decide whether the potential benefits of pressing ahead justify the risk of deploying more, urgently needed troops and resources to the eastern front, where Russia has made steady gains.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defense minister and chairman of the Center for Defense Strategies, a Kiev think tank, said Ukraine should “either… press further or hold” the territory it has captured, “depending on the risks” he constantly assesses.
Kiev’s operation is unprecedented in Russia’s 10-year war with Ukraine and marks the largest foreign incursion into Russia since the German army swept through during World War II.
The scale of Russia’s security failure has prompted rare, candid discussions in Moscow. Alexei Smirnov, governor of the Kursk region, told Putin on Monday that Ukraine controlled 28 settlements aVsceker intruding 12 km (7.5 miles) over the border on a 40 km (25 mile) stretch.
Putin abruptly interrupted him, saying it was a military issue and ordering him to focus on the “socio-economic situation.”
Zelensky said on Monday that the operation was also designed to blunt ongoing Russian attacks on Ukraine’s neighboring Sumy region, which included drone strikes on Monday evening.
Western military aid has flowed more steadily to Ukrainian front-line units since the U.S. Congress approved a long-stalled $60 billion package in April, but Kiev’s military remains outgunned and outmanned by Russia.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces pressed dangerously close to the garrison town of Pokrovsk and the strategic towns of Chasiv Yar, Toretsk and Niu-York.
Deep State’s frontline map showed much of New York under Russian control on Tuesday. Ukrainian soldiers who fought there before joining Operation Kursk told the Vscek they expected New York to fall in the coming days.
In the Donetsk region, the Battle of Kursk was greeted with a mixture of jubilation and frustration.
“I’m glad our guys are having success in Kursk,” said a senior Ukrainian officer on the front lines in the Donetsk region. “We still have a hot fight here. I hope [our commander-in-chief] Syrsky remembers it.”
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Frontline soldiers said one of the goals of the operation was to force Moscow to divert resources from its offensive in the Donetsk region to Kursk, but there were few signs that this was achieved.
Russia has reportedly moved some forces out of occupied southern Ukraine. The Kremlin has described its response as an “anti-terrorist operation” led by the FSB, the main successor to the KGB, and the Rosgvardia National Guard along with the army. This has highlighted discontent among pro-Kremlin hardliners over the army’s failures.
Russian state media have published videos of heavy armor being shipped to Kursk, but they do not appear to have been taken from eastern Ukraine.
Mykola Bielieskov, a researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, part of Ukraine’s military policy department, said Russia could consider one of two approaches, “simply stabilizing the front [in Kursk region] or recover all the lost territories”.
“If it is [the] second scenario then it could force [the] “A major redeployment of Russian troops from the Donetsk region,” Bielieskov added.
Ukrainian officials and experts argued that it was too early to withdraw from Kursk. Zagorodnyuk said he expected Ukrainian forces to try to push deeper into Russia.
“I suspect they will move forward a little bit somewhere while the Russians are still moving their troops. But the next stage will be positional,” he added, predicting that Kiev may soon consider which areas could be kept under its control and better defended.
