Ukrainian troops now 30 km inside Russia’s Kursk region, Moscow says

Ukrainian troops have advanced up to 30km (18 miles) into Russia in what has become the deepest and largest incursion since Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces engaged Ukrainian troops near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, as the offensive in the Kursk region entered its sixth day.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused kyiv of “intimidating the peaceful population of Russia.”

Overnight, President Volodymyr Zelensky directly acknowledged the attack for the first time, saying Ukraine was pushing the war into “the territory of the aggressor.”

“Ukraine is proving that it can effectively restore justice and provide the necessary pressure on the aggressor,” Zelensky told the country in his nighttime speech from kyiv.

He then thanked the Ukrainian “warriors” and said he had discussed the operation in Russia with the country’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

A senior Ukrainian official told AFP news agency that thousands of troops were involved in the operation, far more than the small incursion initially reported by Russian border guards.

While Ukrainian-backed sabotage groups have launched intermittent cross-border incursions, the Kursk offensive marks the largest coordinated attack on Russian territory by kyiv’s conventional forces.

“We are on the offensive. The goal is to expand the enemy’s positions, inflict maximum losses on him and destabilize the situation in Russia, because he is not able to protect his own border,” the official said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces had “thwarted attempts by enemy mobile groups equipped with armored vehicles to penetrate deep into Russian territory.”

But in an apparent acknowledgement that kyiv’s forces have now advanced deep into the Kursk border region, the Defense Ministry reported engaging in fighting with Ukrainian forces near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez – which lie about 25km and 30km from the Russia-Ukraine border.

Ukrainian troops claimed to have taken control of several towns in the Kursk region. In Gevo, a village about 3 km inside Russia’s borders, soldiers filmed themselves removing the Russian flag from an administrative building.

Videos also surfaced showing Ukrainian troops seizing administrative buildings in Sverdlikovo and Poroz, while heavy fighting was reported in Sudzha, a town of around 5,000 people.

Ukrainian troops have already filmed themselves outside Sudja, at a major gas facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine, which continues despite the war.

In Sumy, on the border with the Kursk region, BBC reporters observed a steady stream of armoured personnel carriers and tanks heading towards Russia.

The armoured convoys sport white triangular insignia, apparently to distinguish them from equipment used in Ukraine itself. Meanwhile, aerial photos appear to show Ukrainian tanks engaged in combat in Russia.

Photos analyzed by BBC Verify also appear to show Russia building new defensive lines near the Kursk nuclear power plant, with Ukrainian forces reportedly advancing to within 50km of the facility.

Comparing satellite images of the same location taken yesterday with those taken a few days earlier, the images show several lines of newly constructed trenches in the vicinity, the closest being about 8 km (5 miles) from the plant.

Russia says 76,000 people have been evacuated from border areas of the Kursk region, where a state of emergency has been declared by local authorities.

Acting regional governor Alexei Smirnov also said 15 people were injured Saturday night when wreckage from a downed Ukrainian missile fell on a multi-story building in the regional capital of Kursk.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP, welcomed the operation and said it “brings us much closer to peace than a hundred peace summits.”

“When Russia has to retaliate on its own territory, when the Russian people are fleeing, when people care, this is the only way to show them that this war has to stop,” he told the BBC.

The Kursk offensive comes after weeks of Russian advances in the east, where a succession of villages have been captured by Kremlin forces.

Some analysts have suggested that the Kursk attack was part of an effort to force Russia to redeploy its forces away from eastern Ukraine and relieve pressure on Ukraine’s beleaguered defenses.

But the Ukrainian official told AFP there had been little respite in Russian operations in the east so far.

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the offensive was a “major provocation.”

Moscow has already responded to the Ukrainian attack. Kiev emergency services said a man and his four-year-old son were killed in a missile attack on the capital on Thursday night.

Air defenses also destroyed 53 of the 57 attack drones launched by Russia during its overnight airstrikes, air force officials said. Four North Korean-made missiles were also fired as part of the barrage, they added.

Russia has been forced to turn to the isolated Asian state to replenish its munitions stockpiles, with the United States claiming large quantities of military hardware have been shipped from Pyongyang.