Anika Begay
By Oleksandr Kozhukhar
KIEV (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine had launched an incursion into Russian territory to “restore justice” and put pressure on Moscow’s forces, in his first acknowledgement of Kiev’s surprise offensive in the western Kursk region.
Moscow’s forces were engaged in the sixth day of intense fighting on Sunday against Kiev’s biggest incursion into Russian territory since the war began, leaving Russia’s southwestern areas vulnerable before reinforcements began arriving.
Russian authorities rushed to evacuate residents and imposed a tight security regime in three border regions on Saturday, while Moscow’s staunch ally Belarus sent more troops to the border with Ukraine, accusing Kiev of violating its airspace.
In his evening video address, Zelenskiy said he had discussed the operation with Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, promising to respond in kind after Russia launches its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
“Today I received several reports from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war into the aggressor’s territory,” he said on Saturday evening.
“Ukraine is demonstrating that it can actually restore justice and is ensuring exactly the kind of pressure that is needed: pressure on the aggressor.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that it destroyed 14 Ukrainian drones and four Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles overnight in the Kursk region, and 18 drones in other Russian regions frequently attacked by Ukraine.
In a statement, he called the ground incursion, which military analysts say took the Kremlin by surprise, “barbaric” and said it made no military sense.
Ukraine has occupied at most several dozen square kilometers of Russian territory without claiming it, while Russia controls more than 100,000 square kilometers of internationally recognized Ukrainian territory.
Russian General Valery Gerasimov said on Wednesday that the attacks had stopped, but that Russia had not pushed Ukrainian forces back across the border.
Russian military bloggers said the situation had stabilized after Russian reinforcements, although Ukraine was rapidly building up its forces.
WOUNDS AND EVACUATIONS
On Sunday morning, Kursk officials said 13 people were injured in the city after debris from a destroyed Ukrainian missile fell on a nine-story residential building.
An image posted by the mayor of Kursk shows flames rising through a destroyed apartment building surrounded by charred debris.
It is unclear whether there was further damage. Moscow and Kiev rarely reveal the full extent of the damage inflicted by attacks on them, unless there are injuries or damage to residential buildings.
Alexei Smirnov, acting governor of Kursk, ordered local authorities to speed up the evacuation of civilians in the risk areas. On Saturday, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported that more than 76,000 people had been evacuated.
Kiev and Moscow deny targeting civilians in their attacks during a war that has killed thousands and displaced millions of Ukrainians and has no end in sight.
Russian military bloggers say fighting is taking place up to 20 km (12 miles) deep in the Kursk region, prompting some of them to wonder how Ukraine managed to penetrate the Kursk region so easily.
After a father and his 4-year-old son were killed in a Russian air strike near Kiev on Sunday, Zelenskiy called on Ukraine’s Western partners to make “strong decisions” that would allow his troops to strike deep into Russia with Western weapons.
“When Ukraine’s long-range capabilities have no limits, this war will definitely have a limit too,” he wrote in X.
Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said she had sent an appeal to the United Nations asking it to condemn Ukraine’s actions in Kursk.
In a Telegram post, Moskalkova said she was calling on the UN Commissioner for Human Rights to “take measures to prevent mass, gross violations of human rights.”
