The Ukrainian army said on Wednesday that it had halted the Russian counter-offensive in the areas of the Kursk region that it controls, specifying that “several thousand” Russian civilians were still in these territories.
The Ukrainian incursion that took the Russian military by surprise in August after two and a half years of invasion is the first by a foreign army into Russia since World War II, and is a snub to Vladimir Putin. kyiv is believed to control some 1,000 km2 and a hundred localities.
In mid-September, Russia launched a counteroffensive and claimed advances, but according to kyiv the operation was stopped.
The Russians “tried to attack from the flanks but they were stopped, the situation stabilised and today everything is under control,” the spokesman for the Ukrainian regional command, Oleksiy Dmytrachkivsky, told AFP.
“They have achieved some minor successes, but this success has now turned into a virtual encirclement for them,” he further said, “The Russians entered one locality. They started fighting for another locality, but that’s it.”
However, the Russian counteroffensive has not yet failed, and Moscow claims to have launched new attacks to retake lost territory.
“The Russian operation in the Kursk region is still ongoing, so it is too early to say that it has completely failed,” a senior Ukrainian official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Thousands of Russian civilians
Spokesman Dmytrachkivsky further said that “several thousand” Russian civilians were still in Ukrainian-controlled territory.
They are mostly elderly people, but there are also children, he said, adding that a woman had given birth to a “healthy” boy in the territory.
Mr Dmytrachkivsky also accused the Russian military of launching airstrikes, including using gliding bombs, against its own territory in the area controlled by Ukrainian troops.
At least “23 civilians killed” have been killed in these strikes since the end of August, he said.
AFP is unable to confirm the veracity of these statements.
The spokesman denied any allegations of mistreatment of civilians by Ukrainian military personnel.
“They receive water, food, bread, the military does not offend them,” he said, specifying that the shops and pharmacies were not functioning.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Russian army said it was on the offensive in some areas of the Kursk region and was repelling Ukrainian attacks in others.
Russian arms depot ‘destroyed’
Earlier in the day, Ukraine also claimed to have destroyed a warehouse containing ballistic missiles, aerial bombs and artillery ammunition in western Russia.
On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, drones “literally destroyed” the depot located in the Russian region of Tver, in Toropets, around 400 km northwest of Moscow, a source from the Ukrainian security services (SBU) told AFP.
Videos posted on social media and by Russian and Ukrainian media showed a series of impressive explosions and a huge plume of smoke. AFP was not immediately able to confirm their authenticity, while Russian authorities acknowledged a fire caused by a drone attack, but did not confirm the target.
Tver regional authorities reported a “massive drone attack” and announced on Telegram that a “fire is being extinguished at the site of drone debris” in Toropets, without mentioning the weapons depot.
The governor of the Tver region, Igor Rudenia, ordered a “partial evacuation of the population” before allowing residents to return home a few hours later.
The Russian Health Ministry reported that 13 people had been hospitalized following the attack, saying their lives were not in danger.
Daily devastated by Russian bombings, Ukraine regularly carries out drone strikes in Russia, sometimes hitting targets far from its borders.
The Russian military announced on Wednesday that it had destroyed 54 Ukrainian drones overnight, half of them over the Russian region of Kursk. In the Belgorod region, four people were injured and hospitalized following a drone attack, according to the governor.