KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that the Ukraine army’s incursion into the Kursk region, which has caused more than 100,000 civilians to flee, is an attempt by Kyiv to stop Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Speaking at a meeting with top security and defense officials, Putin said the attack that began last Tuesday appeared to reflect Kyiv’s attempt to gain a better negotiating position in possible future talks to end the war.
He argued that Ukraine may have hoped to destabilize the domestic situation in Russia, adding that it has failed to achieve the goal, and claimed that the number of volunteers to join the Russian military has increased. He said the Russian military is driving on with its eastern Ukraine offensive.
An official in the Kursk border region of Russia on Monday urged more residents to evacuate due to the “very tense situation” in the area, where Russian forces are still scrambling to respond to a surprise Ukrainian attack after almost a week of fierce fighting.
Russia’s emergency authorities say more than 76,000 people have fled their homes in areas of Kursk, where Ukrainian troops and armor poured across the border on Aug. 6, reportedly driving as deep as 30 kilometers (19 miles) into Russia and sowing alarm.
The governor of the Belgorod region adjacent to Kursk also announced the evacuation of people from a district near the Ukrainian border, describing Monday morning as “alarming” but giving no detail.
Ukrainian forces swiftly rolled into the town of Sudzha about 10 kilometers (6 miles) over the border after launching the attack. They reportedly still hold the western part of the town, which is the site of an important natural gas transit station.
The Ukrainian operation is taking place under tight secrecy, and its goals — especially whether Kyiv’s forces aim to hold territory or are staging hit-and-run raids — remain unclear. The stunning maneuver that caught the Kremlin’s forces unawares counters Russia’s unrelenting effort in recent months to punch through Ukrainian defenses at selected points along the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has seen previous incursions into its territory during the nearly 2 1/2-year war, but the foray into the Kursk region marked the largest attack on its soil since World War II, embarrassing President Vladimir Putin and constituting a milestone in the hostilities. It is also the first time the Ukrainian army has spearheaded an incursion rather than pro-Ukraine Russian fighters.
The advance has delivered a blow to Putin’s efforts to pretend that life in Russia has largely remained unaffected by the war. State propaganda has tried to play down the attack, emphasizing the authorities’ efforts to help residents of the region and seeking to distract attention from the military’s failure to prepare for the attack and quickly repel it.
Kursk residents recorded videos lamenting they had to flee the border area, leaving behind their belongings, and pleading with Putin for help. But Russia’s state-controlled media kept a tight lid on any expression of discontent.
Retired Gen. Andrei Gurulev, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, criticized the military for failing to properly protect the border.
He noted that while the military has set up minefields in the border region, it has failed to deploy enough troops to block enemy raids.
“Regrettably, the group of forces protecting the border didn’t have its own intelligence assets,” he said on his messaging app channel. “No one likes to see the truth in reports, everybody just wants to hear that all is good.”
The combat inside Russia rekindled questions about whether Ukraine was using weaponry supplied by NATO members. Some Western countries have balked at allowing Ukraine to use their military aid to hit Russian soil, fearing it would fuel an escalation that might drag Russia and NATO into war.
Though it’s not clear what weapons Ukraine is using across the border, Russian media widely reported that U.S. Bradley and German Marder armored infantry vehicles were there. It was not possible to independently verify that claim.
Ukraine has already used U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia.
But Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in an interview published Monday that the weapons provided by his country “cannot be used to attack Russia on its territory.”
Meanwhile, German Defense Ministry spokesperson Arne Collatz said Monday that legal experts agree that “international law provides for a state that is defending itself also to defend itself on the territory of the attacker. That is clear from our point of view, too.”
He said that the criterion for the use of weapons, at least where those supplied from German military stocks is concerned, is that Ukraine only uses them within the limits of international law.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday that reinforcements that arrived in the area backed by air force and artillery had fended off seven attacks by Ukrainian units near Martynovka, Borki and Korenevo during the previous 24 hours.
The ministry said Russian forces also blocked an attempt by Ukrainian mobile groups to forge deep into the Russian territory near Kauchuk.
Russian air force and artillery also struck concentrations of Ukrainian troops and equipment near Sudzha, Kurilovka, Pekhovo, Lyubimovo and several other settlements, it said. Warplanes and artillery also hit Kyiv’s reserves in Ukraine’s Sumy region across the border, it said.
Pasi Paroinen, an analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group open-source intelligence agency, which monitors the war, said the toughest phase of Ukraine’s incursion is likely to begin now as Russian reserves enter the fray.
He said that “if the Ukrainians are going to advance any further from where they are now, it’s going to be a tough battle, unlike the opening moments of this offensive.”
Ukraine’s progress on Russian territory “is challenging the operational and strategic assumptions” of the Kremlin’s forces, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
It could compel Russia to deploy more military assets to the long border between the two countries, the Washington-based think tank said in an assessment late Sunday.
It described the Russian forces responding to the incursion as “hastily assembled and disparate.”
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