On Friday (9), Ukraine continued a major incursion into Russian territory, with massive use of drones. Ukrainian forces claimed an attack on a military airfield in Russia, more than 300 km from the border between the two countries.
(RFI) The Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region in recent days appears to be the most significant attack on Russian soil since the war in Ukraine began in 2022. It involved around 1,000 troops and more than two dozen armored vehicles and tanks, according to the Russian army.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his speech on Thursday night that Russia needed to “feel” the consequences of its invasion.
“Russia brought war to our country and it must feel what it has done,” Zelensky said.
In the early hours of Friday, the official Russian news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti reported a fire at a military airfield in the Lipetsk region, citing local officials.
Regional governor Igor Artamonov announced via Telegram at around 3am local time that Lipetsk had “been subjected to a massive attack by UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)”, later adding that a local power installation had been damaged.
In a later message, Artamonov asked residents to ignore calls on social media to leave Lipetsk – saying they were “spread by the enemy to sow panic” – only to reverse his position less than an hour later.
“To eliminate the consequences of the detonation of explosive objects, a state of emergency has been introduced in the Lipetsk municipal district,” he said in a post at around 4am, listing evacuation orders for four localities on the outskirts of the city of Lipetsk. “Temporary accommodation sites and transportation are being prepared,” he added.
Artamonov said that preliminary reports suggest that at least six people were injured as a result of the attack. He later announced at around 7am that the red threat level for the city had been lifted.
Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had downed 75 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 26 in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, 19 over Lipetsk, seven over Kursk and 13 over the annexed Crimean peninsula and the surrounding Black Sea.
Seven naval drones on their way to Crimea were also destroyed, he added.
Cross-border advances
The city of Lipetsk is about 330 kilometers from the Ukrainian border with Russia’s Kursk region, where pro-Kiev forces have been waging an offensive on Russian territory for days.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said that Ukraine had made significant territorial gains since the offensive began on Tuesday.
“Geolocation imagery and Russian allegations indicate that Ukrainian forces continued to advance rapidly deeper into the Kursk Oblast on August 8 (Thursday), and Ukrainian forces are reportedly present in areas up to 35 kilometers from the international border with Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast,” the institute said in its daily assessment of the campaign.
However, it warned that Ukrainian forces “certainly do not control” all of this territory.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Thursday that its troops were “continuing to destroy” Ukrainian armed units and were using air strikes, rockets and artillery fire to try to push them back.
The ministry said it had sent in reserve troops and was “thwarting attempts at deeper advances” in Kursk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incursion a “large-scale provocation” by Kiev, and Russia’s top general vowed on Wednesday to annihilate the Ukrainian advance.
The US State Department expressed support for Kiev without directly naming the operation.