MOSCOW: Russia was battling a major cross-border incursion from Ukraine for a second day on Wednesday, with authorities evacuating several thousand civilians due to fighting, officials said.
The incursion began on Tuesday morning, with the Russian defence ministry announcing it had deployed air and artillery firepower to try to quash Ukrainian troops breaking into the Kursk border region.
“The operation for the destruction of Ukrainian army units is continuing,” the defence ministry said on social media Wednesday.
“The enemy’s movement further into Russian territory has been prevented,” it added.
Russia accuses Ukraine of attacking civilians in Kursk, RIA says
Kursk regional governor Alexei Smirnov said “several thousand” people had been evacuated from the region and all mass gatherings had been cancelled.
“Over the course of the last day, with our help, several thousand people left the shelling zone by personal transport,” Smirnov said in a video message on Telegram.
But he added: “The situation in the region is under control”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged to support the region “on all fronts”, he said in the video.
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the incursion, the most serious in months.
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak alluded to the attacks, on social media, without specifically mentioning them. Moscow had used its “border regions with impunity for massive air and artillery attacks”, he said.
Five people have been killed and 24 wounded since the fighting began, 13 of whom have been hospitalised, according to Russian officials.
The defence ministry said there had been losses on the Ukrainian side of 260 soldiers and 50 armoured vehicles, including seven tanks and eight armoured personnel carriers.
The claim could not be independently verified.
Serious attack
Kursk sits just across from Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region and has been subjected to regular Ukrainian shelling attacks since the conflict began in February 2022.
Rybar, a Russian Telegram channel with military links, said that Ukrainian forces had made small inroads across the border and occupied several small settlements.
It said Kyiv’s troops had reached the outskirts of Sudzha, a town of about 5,000 people some eight kilometres (five miles) from the border, but that Russian forces had pushed them back.
Fighters from Ukraine have made several brief incursions into Russia before, some by units of Russians fighting in support of Kyiv – the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in May launched a major new offensive into northeastern Ukraine, a move he said was to create a security buffer to protect Russian border regions from shelling and aerial attacks.
That offensive was focused on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, to the southeast of the Sumy region, from where Tuesday’s cross-border raid was mounted.
However the attacks have continued, with Russia’s Belgorod region declaring more than a dozen villages near the border no-go zones due to bombardment in July.
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