Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday his troops were “moving further” into Russia, as Kyiv’s biggest ever cross-border attack stretched into a second week.
The Ukrainian army entered Russia’s Kursk region on August 6, capturing dozens of settlements in the biggest offensive by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II.
Ukraine separately targeted four Russian airfields overnight with drones in the “largest attack” of its kind since Moscow invaded in 2022, a source in Kyiv’s security services told AFP.
“In the Kursk region, we are moving further. From one to two kilometers (0.6-1.2 miles) in different areas since the beginning of the day,” Zelensky said on social media.
He also said Ukraine had captured “more than 100 Russian servicemen” over the same period and that this would “speed up the return home of our boys and girls”.
The neighboring Russian region of Belgorod meanwhile declared a state of emergency, as the governor warned the situation there was “extremely difficult” due to Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks.
Russia said it had repelled attempts by Ukrainian forces to push deeper into Kursk region in five areas.
Ukraine said Tuesday it would not hold on to Russian land it captured and offered to stop raids if Moscow agreed a “just peace”.
“The sooner Russia agrees to restore a just peace… the sooner the raids by the Ukrainian defense forces into Russia will stop,” Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said.
Joe Biden on Tuesday said the incursion was giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a “real dilemma,” in the US leader’s first comments on Kyiv’s surprise attack.
Putin has vowed to “dislodge” Ukrainian troops from Russian territory, accusing Ukraine of using the operation to “improve its negotiating position” for any future talks with Moscow.
Blindfolded POWs
On the Ukraine side of a border crossing into Kursk, AFP reporters saw toppled concrete fortifications and caved-in remains of security and customs buildings revealing the intensity of the fighting that swept through the area.
On the road, around 10 blindfolded and bound men in Russian military fatigues were being driven in a military vehicle away from the border crossing in the direction of the city of Sumy on Tuesday.
The Russians “didn’t protect the border,” a Ukrainian serviceman who took part in the offensive and identified himself as Ruzhyk told AFP in Sumy region.
“They only had anti-personnel mines scattered around trees at the side of the road and a few mines that they managed to quickly throw along the highways,” he said.
Another serviceman said that his unit of military engineers went in to clear the mines before Ukrainian tanks entered.
Separately, Ukrainian forces fired long-range drones at the Voronezh, Kursk, Savasleyka and Borisoglebsk airfields in central and western Russia overnight, a source in Kyiv’s security services told AFP Wednesday.
The operation was the “largest attack on Russian military airfields in the entire war” and aimed at “preventing the enemy from using these airfields to launch strikes”, the source said.
With AFP
