Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy has acknowledged for the first time that his military forces are conducting an offensive in Russia’s western Kursk region, with local Russian officials calling for evacuations in an assault that marks a change in the war’s status quo and a new challenge to the Kremlin.
The unprecedented assault began on Tuesday, when up to 1,000 troops entered the Kursk region, according to Russian reports.
Battles were still raging into Sunday, with Moscow bombing its own land in an attempt to contain Ukraine’s largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war.
In Ukraine, the country continues to battle Russia on domestic fronts, including a deadly air attack on Kyiv early Sunday.
Ukraine had remained tight-lipped on the extent of its advance, but during a video address Saturday, Zelenskyy said his military was pushing into “the aggressor’s territory.”
“Ukraine is proving that it is really able to bring justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed — pressure on the aggressor,” Zelenskyy said.
The attack has already upset the established norms of Moscow’s 30-month invasion of Ukraine, where Kyiv has struggled to defend its territory.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the rare Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory “a major provocation.”
More than 76,000 people have been evacuated from the Kursk region, the local emergency ministry said Saturday, according to state news agency TASS, as Russian federal authorities declared a state of national emergency amid reports of civilian casualties.
A video circulating on X on Sunday showed a soldier stepping on a Russian flag while another hoisted a Ukrainian flag onto a building in the village of Guevo, in the southern part of Kursk, about two miles from the Ukrainian border.
Another video showed two soldiers removing a Russian flag from the side of a council building in Sverdlikovo, a village in the Kursk region close to Ukraine.
On Saturday, Russia imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions, giving security services powers to restrict the movement of people and vehicles, and use phone-tapping among other measures.
The security measures are intended “to ensure the safety of citizens and suppress the threat of terrorist acts by enemy sabotage and reconnaissance units,” according to the National Counter-Terrorism Committee.
Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia, has also sent more troops to its border with Ukraine and said Saturday that Ukrainian drones had violated its airspace.
Top Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov boasted last week that Ukrainian troops had been stopped, but Russia has yet to report pushing Kyiv’s forces back across the border.
Governors for the Kursk and Belgorod regions said Sunday morning that people had been injured as fighting appeared to continue through Saturday night. Russia’s defense ministry added that it had destroyed 14 Ukrainian drones and four ballistic missiles overnight over the Kursk region.
But advances into Russia come at a time when Ukrainian forces continue to struggle on several long-standing conflict zones inside Ukraine’s own borders.
On Sunday, a 4-year-old boy and his 35-year-old father were killed and three others injured as debris from a downed Russian weapon fell on their house near the capital Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials.
In a post on X, Zelenskyy said according to “preliminary information,” the Russians had used a North Korean missile in the attack.
Mykola Oleshchuk, commander of Ukraine’s air force, said on Telegram that Russia had used four North Korean missiles as part of an overnight attack.
In June, U.S. and South Korean officials accused the North of providing Russia with missiles and other military equipment to help its war in Ukraine. Both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied the existence of an arms deal, which would be in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko warned civilians early on Sunday to stay in shelters.
“Air defense units operating, air raid alert continues,” he wrote on Telegram.
Following the attack, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said it was “necessary to destroy” Russia’s military infrastructure “because the enemy does not accept other arguments.”
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