Photo: Yuri Kochetkov / EPA-EFE
Russia appears to have redeployed several thousand troops from the frontline in eastern Ukraine to its southwestern Kursk region to repel the 10-day long Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) incursion into Russian territory, a senior US official told CNN on Thursday.
Confirming that the Russian military was “diverting some resources, some units, towards the Kursk oblast to ostensibly counter what the Ukrainians are doing,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby stressed that this didn’t mean Putin had “given up military operations” in eastern Ukraine, adding that there was “still active fighting along that front.”
CNN cited two other sources that said Russia had not yet sent its best units from Ukraine to the Kursk region, however, and had so far been relying on poorly trained conscripts from Russia’s Leningrad and Kaliningrad regions to regain control of the region.
An unnamed AFU serviceman familiar with the situation in the Kursk region told Novaya Europe that the AFU had so far suffered no casualties in its incursion into Russian territory and that the civilian population had not mounted any resistance.
Military expert and reserve AFU colonel Roman Svitan told Novaya Europe on Thursday that the AFU would be “fully responsible for the civilian population living in captured territory”, noting that food and humanitarian aid were already being delivered.
Grigory Sergeyev, the head of Liza Alert, a Russian nonprofit that searches for missing persons, announced on Thursday that the group would stop posting information about missing Kursk region civilians online, as the information was being misused by scammers and trolls.
Sergeyev said that Liza Alert had received about 1,000 missing person reports in the region in recent days. Novaya Europe determined on Thursday that at least 444 residents had gone missing since the AFU began their incursion into Russian territory on 7 August.
