Ukraine’s top commander says his forces have captured 1,000 sq km (386 square miles) of Russia’s bordering Kursk region, while Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has vowed a “worthy response” to the attack and ordered his troops to “dislodge the enemy from our territories”.
With Russia still struggling to repel the surprise assault a week after it began, Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by video link and said the advance into Russian territory was ongoing.
“We continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Kursk region. Currently, we control about 1,000 square kilometres of the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said in a video published on Zelenskiy’s Telegram account.
He provided scant other detail, continuing Kyiv’s strategy of silence that contrasts starkly with last year’s counteroffensive which was known about for months in advance and which foundered on Russian defensive lines.
Syrskyi spoke a few hours after Alexei Smirnov, Russia’s acting regional governor of Kursk, estimated that Kyiv’s forces had taken control of 28 settlements in an incursion that was about 12km deep and 40km wide.
Though less than half Syrkyi’s estimate of the Ukrainian gains, Smirnov’s remarks were a striking public admission of a major Russian setback more than 29 months since it launched a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour.
It was not possible to verify independently the claims made by either side.
In a televised meeting with government officials, Putin said that “one of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society”.
“The main task is, of course, for the defence ministry to dislodge the enemy from our territories,” he said, adding that Kyiv was attempting to gain a better negotiating position in potential talks to end the war and to halt Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine.
121,000 people have fled the Kursk region since the start of the fighting, which has killed at least 12 civilians and injured 121 more, regional governor Alexei Smirnov told the meeting.
Authorities in Kursk announced on Monday they were widening their evacuation area to include Belovsky district, home to 14,000 residents. The neighbouring Belgorod region also said it was evacuating its border district of Krasnoyaruzhsky.
Putin said Russia would respond by showing “unanimous support for all those in distress” and claimed there had been an increase in men signing up to fight. “The enemy will receive a worthy response,” he said.
Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in his nightly address on Monday that the operation was a matter of Ukrainian security and the Kursk region had been used by Russia to launch many strikes against Ukraine.
He said Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, which lies across the border from Kursk region, had been struck by Russia almost 2,100 times since 1 June.
“Russia must be forced to make peace if Putin wants to fight so badly,” Zelenskiy said. “Russia brought war to others, and now it is coming home,” he added.
The Ukrainian attack comes after months of slow but steady advances by Russian forces in the east that has forced Ukraine’s troops on to the back foot as they try to withstand Russia’s heavy use of gliding bombs and assault troops.
Former Ukrainian defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told Reuters the Kursk operation looked like it aimed to distract Russian forces and its leadership from the eastern fronts.
“The apparent goal is to create a problem area for Russia, which will distract its forces and its leadership’s attention and resources from where they’re trying to succeed right now,” he said.
It was not clear if that goal had immediately succeeded. Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday its troops had “accelerated the speed of advance” in the eastern Donetsk region and taken the hamlet of Lysychne in their push towards the city of Pokrovsk.
A Ukrainian security official meanwhile told AFP that Kyiv was “not pulling back troops from the [Donetsk] area,” while “the intensity of Russian attacks has gone down a little bit”.
The Ukrainian official said he expected Russia would “in the end” stop the Kursk incursion.
Visiting Kyiv on Monday, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged the US presidential administration to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs.
“What do I think about Kursk? Bold, brilliant, beautiful. Keep it up,” he told reporters.
The combat inside Russia has also rekindled questions about whether Ukraine is 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 American Bradley and German Marder armoured infantry vehicles were there. The claim can not be independently verified.
Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report