Ukraine, which said on Wednesday that it was “making good progress” in the Russian border region of Kursk, assured that it wanted to create a “buffer zone” there to protect itself from bombing, as well as “humanitarian corridors” to help, according to it, Russian civilians.
On August 6, kyiv’s forces swept into the region, catching Russian troops off guard and making the largest incursion by a foreign army onto Russian soil since the end of World War II.
“We continue to advance in the Kursk region. Since the beginning of the day, we have covered between one and two kilometers in different areas,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram, while reporting “more than 100 Russian servicemen captured” on Wednesday.
In the evening, he repeated that the Ukrainian military was advancing “well”. “We are achieving our strategic objective.”
On the eighth day of the attack, the Russian army declared that it had foiled “attempts” by Ukrainian mobile groups to break through in depth near five towns in the Kursk region, one of which, Levchinka, is located 35 km as the crow flies from Ukraine.
Supported by aircraft, drones and artillery, it claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the Ukrainians.
It also released images showing five individuals presented as captured Ukrainian soldiers and others showing four bloodied corpses of soldiers.
For their part, Ukrainian forces used long-range drones to target four airfields in central and western Russia – in Kursk, Voronezh, Savasleika and Borisoglebsk – a source in the security services in Kiev told AFP.
Tens of thousands displaced
Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said Ukraine was seeking to create a “buffer zone” in the Kursk region to protect its border population from Russian shelling.
In May, Vladimir Putin also presented the Kremlin’s offensive against the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv as a measure aimed at establishing a “buffer zone” to stop, ultimately without success, Ukrainian strikes in the Russian border regions.
In the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Kursk, a state of emergency was declared on Wednesday due to Ukrainian bombings.
The Ukrainian incursion has already caused the departure of more than 120,000 people, according to Russia. At least 12 civilians have been killed and more than 100 injured, the authorities of the Kursk region announced on Monday, without providing any new figures since.
According to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, “more than 20,000 people” have already been evacuated from the Sumy region, which borders Kursk.
Ukraine, through its Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, announced on Wednesday that its army planned to open humanitarian corridors in the Kursk region to facilitate the evacuation of civilians “both towards Russia and Ukraine.”
“Intense” fights
On Tuesday evening, Volodymyr Zelensky reported “difficult and intense” fighting in the Kursk region and claimed that 74 localities there were under kyiv’s control and that “hundreds” of Russians had been taken prisoner.
The Russian authorities, for their part, acknowledged on Monday the loss of 28 localities and Ukrainian territorial gains extending over an area 40 kilometres wide and 12 kilometres deep.
According to calculations made by AFP on Tuesday from Russian sources relayed by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American think tank, Ukrainian troops have advanced 800 km2 in this region.
On the Ukrainian side of the border, residents of the village of Iounakivka met by AFP journalists said they had no intention of leaving the area despite repeated calls from the authorities.
“A horse, two pigs and six dogs,” lists an elderly woman to explain why she wants to stay despite the bombings.
At a border crossing, AFP saw a steady stream of Ukrainian armoured vehicles entering the Kursk region on Wednesday.
“Dilemma” for Putin
Speaking for the first time on the subject, US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the Ukrainian military operation created “a real dilemma for Putin”.
After several complicated months on the eastern front, Ukrainian troops seem to have found a second wind thanks to this unexpected success.
On the streets of Moscow, Olga Raznoglazova says she is “very worried.” On vacation in the Russian capital, she says she lives about thirty kilometers from the Kursk nuclear power plant but plans to return home.
Roman, a 41-year-old Russian working in the merchant navy, says that only a “small group of saboteurs” armed by the West and NATO have entered the region and that the Russian army “will kill them, and that’s it.”