Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky broke his silence over the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU) ongoing incursion into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region on Thursday as Ukrainian troops continued to strengthen their foothold on Russian territory.
While not mentioning the Kursk region by name or commenting directly on the AFU’s strategy, Zelensky hailed “productive reports” from the country’s military and said that Russia had “brought the war to our land, and it should feel what it has done”.
Ukrainian forces were in control of around 100 square kilometres of Russian territory by Thursday evening and had captured “hundreds” of Russian troops, according to a Zelensky advisor who spoke to The Washington Post on condition of anonymity.
Earlier on Thursday, Vladimir Putin held a video call with acting Kursk Governor Alexey Smirnov, in which he announced that anyone forced to evacuate from the affected areas near the Ukrainian border would receive 10,000 rubles (€100) in compensation and that the government would “assess other damage” in the region.
Putin’s comments came amid increasing discontent from residents of the Kursk region, where, according to Russia’s Health Ministry, 66 people have been injured as a result of Ukrainian attacks since the incursion began on Tuesday.
Russian Railways announced that stations in the towns of Sudzha, Korenevo and Psyol were temporarily closed to passengers and that additional services would operate between the regional capital Kursk and Moscow due to high demand as thousands of residents continued to evacuate the region independently.
Residents of Sudzha, much of which was reportedly under AFU control by Thursday morning, recorded a video message for Vladimir Putin in which they said they had been “abandoned” by the government and accused Russia’s military leadership of covering up the true extent of the “huge, heavy fighting” in the area.
“We’ve been helping our army since the beginning of the special military operation. We’ve been left with our children, without shelter, without money. Our relatives are still there, we can’t reach them, there is no signal”, a woman on the video said, adding that the town had been “turned to ruins in a few hours”.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov and other members of Russia’s top brass had ignored intelligence warnings that Ukrainian troops were gathering near the border up to two weeks before the incursion began, had failed to brief Putin and allowed Russian forces to be caught off guard as a result.
Gerasimov told Putin in a meeting on Wednesday that the Ukrainian advance in the region had been halted and that the Russian army would “defeat the enemy and reach the state border”.
The Russian Defence Ministry acknowledged the hostilities near the town of Sudzha in the Kursk region on Friday for the first time since the Ukrainian incursion began, saying that “the Russian Armed Forces continue to repel the attempted AFU invasion of Russian territory” and claiming that Ukraine had lost “over 280 soldiers” in the Kursk region in the past 24 hours.
A video posted by the Russian Defence Ministry on Friday showed Russian Su-25 bombers attacking what appeared to be AFU positions in the border area of the Kursk region and featured a Russian military pilot saying that the attack was “another media provocation by Kyiv” that was “bound to fail”.