Russia continued fighting on Wednesday (7) against a Ukrainian incursion that began the day before in Kursk, a region bordering Ukraine where five civilians have died and thousands have left their homes due to fighting and shelling, official sources said.
According to Moscow, Ukrainian forces entered the region on Tuesday with almost 300 soldiers, a dozen tanks and another 20 armored vehicles.
Kiev remains silent about the operation
Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced a “large-scale provocation” and said that the “Kiev regime” is “firing indiscriminately with various types of weapons, including rockets, at civilian buildings, houses and ambulances”.
The head of state is due to meet with the commanders of the security forces and the army in the next few hours.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that “the operation to destroy Ukrainian army formations continues,” more than 24 hours after the incursion began.
Clashes continued through the night in areas “immediately adjacent to the border”, it added.
The ministry said on Telegram that Russian soldiers “prevented the enemy from advancing deeper into Russian territory”, apparently acknowledging that Ukrainian soldiers gained ground during the operation.
According to the Rybar network on Telegram, which has millions of followers and is close to the Russian Army, Ukrainian troops took villages in the Kursk region.
A source in the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) told AFP that a small drone destroyed a Russian Mi-28 helicopter in mid-flight, an event “unprecedented in the history of warfare”.
Thousands of people have fled the region due to the fighting and shelling, which has left at least five civilians dead and 28 injured, local authorities said.
The Russian Health Ministry reported that 13 people – including three minors – were hospitalized in the region after the Ukrainian shelling.
The Ukrainian authorities are keeping almost completely quiet about the situation in Kursk.
Sergei Zgurets, a Ukrainian military expert, considered that the army seems to be trying to divert Russian forces from other sectors of the front, where they have been facing pressure for several months.
The geography of this area of Russia makes it possible to “effectively carry out this kind of deterrent action against the enemy with a reduced device. And that’s probably what the Ukrainian army is doing,” he told AFP.
Drone attacks
Two other Russian regions on the border with Ukraine, Voronezh and Belgorod, were also targeted on Wednesday by Ukrainian drone attacks on residential buildings, according to local authorities.
“Two drones attacked a building in Chebekino, Belgorod, smashing the windows of one apartment and causing a fire in another,” wrote governor Vyacheslav Gladkov on Telegram, according to whom “no one was injured”.
In Voronezh, the capital of the region of the same name, the wreckage of two drones shot down by anti-aircraft defenses hit the facade of one building and destroyed the windows of several apartments in another, according to Governor Alexander Gusev.
Since the conflict began in February 2022, there have been several incursions into Russia by Ukrainian fighters. The Russian army says it has prevented all of them, but in some cases they have had to resort to artillery and aviation, as in Tuesday’s incursion.
The operation comes amid a struggle by Kiev’s forces, who are facing a shortage of ammunition and new recruits, to contain the advance of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine in recent months.
In May, Russian troops also began a ground offensive in the border region of Kharkiv, where they took several locations before being contained by the Ukrainian Army.
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