Ukraine said Friday it was continuing its unprecedented advance into Russia’s Kursk region, saying it wanted to force Russia to enter “fair” negotiations after nearly two and a half years of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its territory.
The Russian army, for its part, is maintaining its pressure further south, in the Ukrainian Donbass, where it has had the advantage for several months over kyiv’s numerically inferior forces.
The Ukrainian army attacked the Kursk region on August 6, seizing, according to kyiv, 82 localities and 1,150 square kilometers in an offensive that surprised Moscow and constitutes the largest foreign military operation on Russian soil since World War II.
“The troops of the attack group continue the fight and have advanced in some sectors by one to three kilometers,” Ukrainian army commander Oleksandr Syrsky said during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky broadcast Friday evening.
General Syrsky claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to take Russian soldiers prisoner, and President Zelensky rejoiced in the evening over the “destruction” of Russian positions in the area.
Earlier on Friday, the Kremlin’s army had again assured that it was “repelling” the Ukrainian offensives.
kyiv says it has captured in particular the town of Sudja, located 10 kilometres from the border and where there is a major gas hub of the Russian giant Gazprom, which supplies Europe via Ukraine.
At least 12 civilians have been killed and more than a hundred injured since the start of the Ukrainian operation, according to Russian authorities.
For “fair” negotiations
In recent days, Ukrainian authorities have given various reasons to justify the assault, while Russia still occupies almost 20% of Ukrainian territory: to force Moscow to withdraw troops from other parts of the front and to create a “buffer zone” to stop shelling in Ukrainian border territories.
But kyiv also wants to use the conquered Russian territories as bargaining chips in possible negotiations with the Kremlin.
“The military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter into a fair negotiation process,” Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, told X on Friday.
However, discussions between the two parties have been completely blocked since spring 2022.
Volodymyr Zelensky has said he wants to develop by November, the date of the presidential election in the United States – a vital ally of kyiv – a plan that would serve as the basis for a future peace summit to which the Kremlin must be invited.
He reiterates that peace can only be possible if the Russian army withdraws completely, including from the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
Vladimir Putin, for his part, is demanding that kyiv give him back the Ukrainian regions that it claims to annex and renounce its membership in NATO. These demands are unacceptable to Ukrainians and Westerners, who have never stopped calling for respect for international law.
Refugee flow
Faced with the unprecedented advance of Ukrainian forces into Russian territory, several tens of thousands of civilians have already fled the border villages of the Kursk region.
In the town of the same name, several dozen kilometres from the fighting, a church welcomed refugees on Friday, according to AFP journalists on the scene.
Among them was Valentina, 82, whose son had to come and take her away.
“Nobody evacuated us,” she says. “The first few days […] I walked the streets: no one! Then my son came to get me and I left quickly.
The evacuations come as fighting continues in the area. During one of them, two Russian aid workers were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Friday, according to their organization.
In the evening, the governor of the neighboring Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, announced that he was blocking access and evacuating five border towns, while “temporarily” closing access to a sixth.
Russian pressure in the East
On the Ukrainian side, the flow of evacuees also continued on Friday towards the city of Sumy, capital of the Ukrainian region of the same name which faces the Russian region of Kursk.
Lyubov, 62, arrived in Sumy after being forced to leave her home in a hurry, with a heavy heart. “We are suffering, but the war is returning to where it came from,” in Russia, she told AFP.
At the same time, heavy fighting continues further south, in eastern Ukraine, the epicentre of the conflict, where the Russian army has been gaining ground for months, despite heavy losses.
Moscow claimed on Friday the capture of a new village, that of Serguiivka, about fifteen kilometers from the city of Pokrovsk, a logistical hub on the road to the strongholds of Chassiv Iar and Kostiantynivka.
The day before, Russian forces had claimed the capture of another village in this sector, where they have been advancing since May.