Russia on Monday ordered new evacuations of civilians from the Belgorod and Kursk regions bordering Ukraine, nearly a week after a major Ukrainian incursion that has already forced tens of thousands of people to flee.
After months of retreating in the face of Russian troops on its eastern front, Ukraine launched an unprecedented large-scale operation in the Russian region of Kursk on August 6, taking control of several localities there, according to analysts. The neighboring Belgorod is not currently involved in fighting, but the situation there is considered “alarming” by the authorities.
“Thousands” of Ukrainian troops are taking part in the surprise assault, according to a senior Ukrainian security official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
“The goal is to stretch the enemy’s positions, inflict maximum losses on him, and destabilize the situation in Russia. […] and to transfer the war to Russian territory,” he explained to AFP.
For its part, the Russian army continues to say that it is inflicting heavy losses on the Ukrainians, in particular by preventing “attempted breakthroughs” towards localities located approximately 30 kilometres as the crow flies from Ukrainian territory.
But the situation for civilians is delicate: more than 76,000 people living in the Kursk region were evacuated according to the authorities on Saturday, and on Monday, the acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, announced that the evacuations were being extended to the Belovski district, which has a population of nearly 15,000.
Faced with an “alarming” situation, the authorities of the Belgorod region, adjacent to that of Kursk, also ordered in the morning the evacuation of the inhabitants of the Krasnoyarsk district “for [leur] security “.
“There is enemy activity” in the area, acknowledged the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, who did not specify how many civilians were affected by this decision.
Welcoming evacuees
In Moscow, the reception of displaced people has been organized for several days.
Daria Chistopolskaya, a 28-year-old midwife, came to drop off toys that she would otherwise have given to relatives or stored in the family dacha.
“The state does not care enough about these people and people themselves should help each other in such situations,” she laments to AFP.
On the night of Sunday to Monday, the Russian army also said it had “destroyed” a total of 18 Ukrainian attack drones in three regions of western Russia (Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh), without mentioning any possible damage or injuries.
AFP journalists saw dozens of Ukrainian armoured vehicles on Sunday on roads in the Ukrainian region of Sumy (north), opposite Kursk.
These vehicles, of different types, are marked with a white triangle which clearly serves to identify the troops taking part in this offensive.
After days of silence on the operation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained on Saturday that kyiv was seeking, through this attack, to “move the war to the territory of the Russian aggressor.”
In this context, the Ukrainian authorities have requested the evacuation of at least 20,000 civilians from the Sumy region. On the Russian side, the “anti-terrorist” regime has been established in the border regions of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.
“Reinforced morale”
The fire that broke out on Sunday evening in the cooling system of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, occupied by the Russian armed forces, has also been “extinguished”, assured on Monday an official of the occupation in the south of Ukraine, Vladimir Rogov.
kyiv and Moscow blamed each other for the incident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has stated that “there is no impact on nuclear safety”, while once again denouncing “irresponsible attacks which […] increase the danger of a nuclear accident.”
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and has been waging a relentless offensive there ever since, occupying nearly 20% of the country and subjecting Ukrainian cities to daily artillery, missile and drone attacks.
According to the Ukrainian official interviewed by AFP, the incursion was initially aimed at diverting Russian forces from the Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv and Donbass (east) to ease their pressure on kyiv’s smaller army.
But, for now, “their pressure in the East continues. They are not withdrawing their troops from this area”, even if “the intensity” of Russian attacks there has “diminished a little bit”.
The attack, however, “caught the Russians off guard” and “really boosted our morale,” the official said.
Sooner or later, Russia will “stop” the Ukrainian units in the Kursk region, but if “after a certain time it does not manage to retake these territories, they can be used for political purposes,” for example, during peace negotiations, he said.
The official finally assured that Ukraine’s Western allies had been warned of the incursion “given that Western weaponry is actively used” in this operation.