Russia says it has spent a third day carrying out a marvelous Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk border region, which reports suggest may be one of the largest cross-border incursions undertaken into kyiv during the war.
A Russian Defense Ministry official said the Russian military and border guards prevented Ukrainian forces from penetrating deeper into Russia’s southwestern region. He added that the army is targeting Ukrainian fighters seeking to advance toward dominance from Ukraine’s Sumy region.
“Attempts to penetrate deep into the territory in the direction of Kursk by individual ensembles are being suppressed,” the ministry said.
Heavy fighting has been reported near the city of Sudzha, where Russian natural gas enters Ukraine, raising concerns about a possible sudden halt to transit flows to Europe.
Oleksiy Goncharkeno, a Ukrainian lawmaker, said in a series of posts on Facebook and Telegram that Ukrainian forces had taken the Sudzha fuel hub.
“Our men heroically captured Putin’s number one fuel in Suja,” Goncharenko said.
However, kyiv has officially commented on the obvious incursion into Kursk.
In a video addressed to the country on Thursday afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made no mention of the fighting in the Kursk region, but stressed that “Russia has brought the war to our territory and feels what it did. “
“Ukrainians know how to achieve their goals,” Zelensky said, adding that on Thursday he received three “productive reports, precisely the kind that our country wants now” from the commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Russia says its military has stopped the Ukrainian advance in the border domain about 500 kilometers southwest of Moscow, but army bloggers and open source knowledge suggest that Ukrainian troops have made progress in several areas of Kursk.
The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin via video link on Thursday about the situation there. Smirnov said the region is contemplating equipping fuel stations with electronic warfare equipment and offering them an unspecified armored defense.
William Taylor, a former United States ambassador to Ukraine, saw several reasons why Kiev needs to take military action of the kind Russia says it is taking positions in Kursk.
“They need . . . to show that the Ukrainians can push the Russians back,” he said on the Power program on Thursday.
“That’s the only time they did this at the beginning of the war. No, they can still do it. “
Taylor said Kyiv could also consider the option of possible negotiations with Russia, “and if the Ukrainians hold some of the territory, that will give them some leverage. “
Russia launched its all-out war on its neighbor in February 2022.
The fighting has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed key infrastructure in the country, as well as buildings and structures in towns and cities.
With information from Dennis Kovtun of CBC and Reuters
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