VLADIVOSTOK: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine’s Kursk incursion was aimed at slowing the Russian advance in Donbas but that it had failed as Kyiv had simply weakened its forces along the rest of the front.

In the biggest foreign attack on Russian sovereign territory since World War Two, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through the Russian border on Aug. 6 aided with swarms of drones, heavy weaponry, and artillery, some Western-made.

Putin, speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, said that Ukraine by transferring large and well-trained units into Russia, Ukraine had weakened itself and allowed Russia to accelerate the offensive in eastern Ukraine.

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Putin said it was Russia’s “sacred duty” to expel the invaders and that Russian forces were starting to push out Ukrainian troops from Kursk.

He said that the Russian advance on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk was successful.