Joe McConnell
Ukrainian troops have advanced as far as 30km into Russia, in what has become the deepest and most significant incursion since Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces clashed with Ukrainian troops near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, as the offensive in the Kursk region entered its sixth day.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Kiev of “intimidating the peaceful Russian population.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky, who directly acknowledged the attack for the first time in a speech late on Monday, said Russia had launched 2,000 cross-border attacks from Kursk this summer.
“Artillery, mortars, drones. We also have missile attacks, and each of these attacks deserves a fair response,” Zelensky told the country in his evening address from Kiev.
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP news agency that thousands of troops were involved in the operation, a far larger number than the small incursion initially reported by Russian border guards.
While Ukrainian-backed sabotage groups have launched intermittent cross-border incursions, the Kursk offensive represents the largest coordinated attack on Russian soil by Kiev’s conventional forces.
“We are on the offensive. The goal is to extend the enemy’s positions, inflict maximum losses and destabilize the situation in Russia, as they are unable to protect their borders,” the official said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its forces had “thwarted attempts by enemy mobile groups equipped with armored vehicles to penetrate deep into Russian territory.”
But in an apparent admission that Kiev’s forces have now advanced deep into the Kursk border region, the Defense Ministry said it had engaged Ukrainian troops near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, which are 25 and 30 kilometers (15 and 19 miles) from the Russian-Ukrainian border, respectively.
Footage circulating online and verified by the BBC also appears to show a Russian attack near the village of Levshinka, about 25km from the border.
Ukrainian troops said they had captured several settlements in the Kursk region. In Guevo, a village about 3 km (2 miles) inside Russia, soldiers filmed themselves removing the Russian flag from an administrative building.
Images also emerged of Ukrainian troops seizing administrative buildings in Sverdlikovo and Poroz, while heavy fighting was reported in Sudzha, a town of around 5,000 people.
Ukrainian troops have already filmed themselves outside Sudzha, at a major gas facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU through Ukraine, which continues despite the war.
In Sumy, on the border with the Kursk region, BBC journalists witnessed a steady stream of armored personnel carriers and tanks heading for Russia.
The armored convoys sport white triangular markings, apparently to distinguish them from hardware used inside Ukraine itself. Meanwhile, aerial photos have emerged showing Ukrainian tanks engaged in combat inside Russia.
Photos analyzed by BBC Verify also appeared to show Russia building new defense lines near the Kursk nuclear power plant. Ukrainian forces engaged in Obshchy Kolodez were less than 50 km (31 miles) from the facility.
Comparing satellite images of the same location taken yesterday with those from a few days earlier, several newly constructed trenches can be seen in the vicinity, the closest of which is about 8 km (5 miles) from the plant.
Russia says 76,000 people have been evacuated from border areas in the Kursk region, where local authorities have declared a state of emergency.
Acting regional governor Aleksei Smirnov also said 15 people were injured late Saturday evening when remnants of a downed Ukrainian missile hit a multi-story building in the regional capital of Kursk.
Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko praised the operation and said it was “bringing us much closer to peace than a hundred peace summits.”
“When Russia has to fight on its own soil, when Russian people flee, when people worry, this is the only way to show them to stop this war,” he told the BBC.
The Kursk offensive comes after weeks of Russian advances in the east, where a series of villages have been captured by Kremlin forces.
Some analysts have speculated that the Kursk attack was part of an attempt to force Russia to move its troops away from eastern Ukraine and ease pressure on besieged Ukrainian defenses.
But the Ukrainian official told AFP that Russian operations in the east had not slowed down significantly so far.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the offensive was a “serious provocation.”
Moscow has already responded to the Ukrainian attack. Kiev emergency services said a man and his four-year-old son were killed in a rocket attack on the capital overnight.
Air defenses also destroyed 53 of 57 attack drones launched by Russia during its nighttime air strikes, air force officials said. Four North Korean-made missiles were fired as part of the strike, they said.
Russia has been forced to turn to the isolated Asian state to supply its munitions, while the United States claims that Pyongyang has shipped huge quantities of military hardware.
