We heard our defense and security analyst, Professor Michael Clarke, say that Ukraine has “launched a complete stun attack” against Russia this week.
As we reported, Ukraine invaded Russia’s Kursk region, prompting the evacuation of more than 70,000 people and the activation of emergency security measures in three Russian regions.
Professor Clarke says the evidence indicates Ukraine will “win this war as it goes”.
“Not only did they launch a wonderful attack, but they introduced a whole paralyzing attack. They stunned the Russians, stunned Western donors,” he says.
As things stand, the surprise of this wonderful attack “plays in kyiv’s favor. ”
The pocket that penetrated Russian territory is at least 35 miles and about 15 miles deep, he said.
“It’s powerful. . . Ukrainians will have to be very satisfied with the current situation. “
Can Ukraine take its offensive?
When asked if Ukrainian forces will be able to reach their position, Professor Clarke says they will want to be reinforced.
He claims that in Russia there are about 3 or 4 brigades, which are “high-level elite troops. ”
According to the analyst, Ukraine is serious about this offensive.
No data has been provided on the targets of Ukraine, which has tightly controlled data security around the invasion, but Professor Clarke says Kyiv hopes to attract smart Russian army sets and relieve Ukrainian front lines elsewhere.
So far, anecdotal evidence suggests that Moscow is withdrawing its troops from southern Ukraine, especially in the Shasiv Yar and Pokrovsk regions.
Russia “will do everything in its power in this pocket,” he said.
“Putin lets this continue”
Professor Clarke believes that Russia will most likely react.
“The idea of having part of their territory confiscated for the first time since 1941 . . . Putin let this stand,” he said.
Moscow “will fight back as strongly as necessary and this war will be even fiercer. ”
On the Ukraine side, Professor Clarke says Kyiv is “betting on this offensive work” and “so far it is bearing fruit”.
The longer the Ukrainians hold Kursk, the Russia will have to expel them, he said.
As we reported, we entered the sixth day of fighting in Russia’s Kursk region after Ukrainian forces crossed the border.
Here is some of the latest footage from the area, including a damage apartment building apparently hit by drone debris and the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The Russian Defense Ministry also shared photos showing, it said, the destruction of a Ukrainian tank.
Earlier this week, we reported on a Russian in a supermarket in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
The missile attack killed 14 other people and injured 44 others.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general announced that three young men were among the dead.
These were 3 women aged nine, 11 and 16 years old.
The attack took place in the town of Kostiantynivka, which also suffered an attack on a local market in September last year, killing another 17 people.
The Russian Defense Ministry shared aerial images showing a Ukrainian tank on fire.
We see the firing tank being enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke.
The footage was reportedly filmed in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces introduced an offensive.
By Deborah Haynes, Security & Defense Editor
Details about the number of Ukrainian troops in Russia are unclear, and commanders are intentionally silent about a secretly planned mission.
But they are most likely in the thousands, with elements of at least three well-equipped brigades on the ground, deploying tanks, armored vehicles, artillery guns and drones.
It’s also difficult to assess how the Ukrainian attackers pushed, with Russian military bloggers saying they penetrated as far as about 12 miles from the Ukrainian border.
Videos, widely shared on social media, claim to show Ukrainian infantrymen waving Ukraine’s yellow and blue flag on Russian territory, in the city of Sudzha and in a settlement near the Ukrainian border in the neighboring Belgorod region.
Under pressure, Russia has sent reinforcements and released photographs of its response, but it is the sixth day of the Ukrainian offensive and fighting continues.
Commenting on the events, analysts noted that this was the first time Russia had been invaded since Adolf Hitler in 1941.
But the attack on Ukraine is the act of a competing force seizing land.
Rather, it is the counterintuitive action of a country that invaded through Vladimir Putin’s Russia a decade ago – with the capture of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine – and then was further devastated by Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
This makes kyiv’s counterinvasion of Kursk the most recent – though arguably most audacious – attempt across Ukraine to expel Russian forces from within its own sovereign territory.
To counter the much larger Russian army, Ukrainian commanders had to be at the forefront from the start and prepared to take massive risks.
Two and a half years ago, outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian troops – subsidized by Western weapons – defied all odds to save Russia from taking over kyiv.
They then forced the Russian invaders to withdraw from all of northern Ukraine.
A few months later, in September 2022, the Ukrainian innovated again.
He introduced a marvelous counteroffensive against Russian troops occupying the northeast of his country, just as Russia faced a simultaneous but much more anticipated counterattack in the south.
Ukraine recaptured swaths of territory in the Kharkiv region during the offensive. His forces also continued the counterattack in the south, retaking the southern city of Kherson.
However, Russian positions elsewhere in southern Ukraine and in the Donbass in the east are much more powerful and harder to defeat.
As Ukraine’s Western allies overlooked deadly weapons such as tanks and long-range missiles, anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive grew last year.
But this effort failed because the fighting failed to penetrate the heavily fortified Russian lines.
This time, the leadership of Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in kyiv, has taken another gamble.
Instead of preparing their troops to try again to attack Russian positions in Ukraine, the leaders chose to send their infantrymen to Russia, where the border is, curiously, much less well defended.
It is highly unlikely that Ukraine has the ability or preference to own much or any of the territory, yet it has dealt a humiliating blow to Mr. Putin and brought Russia’s bloody war in Ukraine that much closer to fellow Russians and their citizens. president.
The city in Russia’s Belgorod region is now facing shelling by Ukrainian forces, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Four other people were injured, in addition to three men wounded by shrapnel and taken to Shebekino hospital.
They are said to be in good condition.
The shelling also destroyed an apartment building, a bus stop and a bus, Gladkov said.
The region is lately under emergency measures after Ukrainian forces crossed the border into the neighboring Kursk region.
Ukrainian media have reported in the past about a video showing Ukrainian troops in the village of Poroz in the Belgorod region.
Poroz is a few kilometers west of Shebekino.
Last night we heard the Ukrainian president comment on the Russian attack on Kyiv.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered his “deepest condolences” to the circle of relatives of the father and son killed in the attack.
He said early suggestions were that Russia used a North Korean missile in the attack.
“Pyrotechnics experts are still searching for precise knowledge related to this missile,” he wrote in X.
President Russia introduced more than 30 missiles and 800 guided aerial bombs into Ukraine last week.
“We Ukrainians are deeply grateful to all our partners who supply us with air defense systems and fighter jets,” he said.
“However, to truly end Russian terrorism, we need not only a complete air shield capable of protecting all of our cities and communities, but also corporate decisions from our partners, decisions that remove restrictions on our defensive actions. ”
The construction of an apartment breaks and a car burns after an overnight airstrike in Russia’s Kursk region.
The local government said the damage was caused by a downed Ukrainian missile.
Kursk officials said earlier that thirteen other people were wounded in the attack.
Although the extent of the Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region remains uncertain, the city of Sudzha has been the focus of attention in recent days.
Located about 10. 5 km from the border with Ukraine, it is approximately one hundred km from the regional capital, the city of Kursk.
Sudzha is home to about 5,000 people and is a major fuel transportation hub.
The Ukrainian troops who have crossed the border – possibly several thousand in number – are believed to have expanded the spaces under their control.
Ukrainian media reports that Kyiv’s forces appear to have entered Russia’s Belgorod region.
Troops have already crossed the border into the Kursk region and are taking up positions there.
The media, as the Ukrainian newspaper Suspilne adds, is now publishing a video in which five uniformed Ukrainian infantrymen stand in front of a building and one of them says: “I wish you health, the 252nd battalion is in the village from Poroz, in Belgorod region. Glory to Ukraine!”
They held the battalion flag and a Georgian flag.
A sign in the construction reads “Porozovsky Village Club”.
The video has not been independently verified via Sky News, but the Ukraine-based fact-checking mission VoxCheck showed the video filmed in Poroz, 3 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
It is unclear when the video was filmed or if it was part of a raid.