After months of withdrawal by Russian soldiers on its eastern front, Ukraine launched its biggest cross-border attack against Russia on August 6 since the start of the Russian offensive in February 2022.
It is also the largest offensive by a foreign military on Russian soil since World War II.
“Thousands” of Ukrainian soldiers are taking part, a senior Ukrainian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The goal, according to him, is “to stretch the enemy's positions, to cause them maximum losses, to destabilize the situation in Russia. […] and to transfer the war to the territory of Russia”.
Expel the enemy
“The main task of the Defense Ministry is to expel the enemy from our territories,” Vladimir Putin said Monday during a meeting with security forces officials.
For the Russian president, this is an unexpected setback as his army has had the upper hand on Ukraine's eastern front for months, nibbling away at the ground without making any major progress.
At this stage, 28 localities in the Kursk region came under Ukrainian control, the interim governor, Alexei Smirnov, admitted. According to him, the Ukrainian gains span an area 40 kilometers wide and twelve kilometers deep, far less than the 1,000 km2 claimed by Ukrainian commander Syrsky.
These figures reveal the scale of the attack by Ukrainian forces, while the Russian military claims daily since August 6 that it is inflicting heavy losses on its adversary and preventing any “deep breakthrough”.
121,000 people displaced
According to Alexei Smirnov, at least twelve civilians were killed and another 121 were injured, “including ten children”, during the Ukrainian army incursion.
Faced with this situation, the Russian authorities on Monday ordered new evacuations of civilians in the Kursk region, as well as in Belgorod, both bordering Ukraine. “To date, 121,000” people “have left or been evacuated” from Kursk, Mr. Smirnov detailed. The one in Belgorod is not at this stage affected by the fighting, but the situation there is considered “alarming” by the regional authorities who announced evacuations in the morning.
The Ukrainian army is trying to “sow discord in our society”, criticized Vladimir Putin, accusing Kiev of “carrying out the will” of the West.
“Move the War”
On the roads of the Ukrainian region of Sumi (north), opposite that of Kursk, dozens of Ukrainian armored vehicles drive forward marked with a white triangle that clearly serves to identify the troops taking part in the attack from Russia.
For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country remains almost 20% occupied by Russia, the objective of the surprise assault in the Kursk region is clear: “to move the war to the territory of the Russian aggressor.”
According to the Ukrainian official, the incursion also aimed to reduce the pressure on the Ukrainian army in Donbass (East), where Russian troops have advanced since the beginning of the year.