Putin says Ukraine's attack on Russia is aimed at ceasefire negotiations

By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Ukraine's biggest attack on Russian territory since the start of the war was aimed at improving Kyiv's negotiating position ahead of possible peace talks and at slowing the advance of Russian forces.

Ukrainian forces rammed through the Russian border last Tuesday and swept across some western parts of Russia's Kursk region, a surprise attack that laid bare the weakness of Russian border defences in the area.

Putin, in his most detailed public remarks on the incursion to date, said Ukraine "with the help of its Western masters" was trying to improve its position ahead of possible talks.

He questioned what negotiations there could be with an enemy he accused of firing indiscriminately at Russian civilians and nuclear facilities.

"The main task, of course, is for the defence ministry to squeeze out, to knock out the enemy from our territories," Putin said, adding that Russian forces were accelerating their advance along the rest of the 1000-km (620-mile) main front.

"The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response," he said.

He also said he expected further Ukrainian attempts to destabilise Russia's Western border.

Russian officials say Ukraine is trying to show its Western backers that it can still muster major military operations just as pressure mounts on both Kyiv and Moscow to agree to talk about halting the war.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in what it termed a special military operation and now controls 18% of Ukrainian territory. Until the surprise attack on Russia, Ukraine had been losing territory to Russian forces despite hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. and European support aimed at stopping and even reversing the Russian advance.

One Russian source with knowledge of official thinking said that by attacking Russia, Ukraine was emboldening hardliners who were arguing that any ceasefire talks were a waste of time and that Russia should push much further into Ukraine.

BORDER ATTACK

Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia's security council, said last week that Russia had taken 420 square km (162 square miles) of territory from Ukrainian forces since June 14.

But Ukraine has just managed to carve out a comparable amount of territory. The acting governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, said Ukraine controlled 28 settlements in the region, and the incursion was about 12 km deep and 40 km wide.

After more than two years of the most intense land war in Europe since World War Two, both Moscow and Kyiv have indicated that they are pondering a halt though in public both are still far apart on what a ceasefire might look like.

Both are also watching the U.S. election. Kyiv is concerned that U.S. support could weaken if Republican Donald Trump wins the November presidential election.

Trump has said he would end the war, and both Russia and Ukraine are keen to gain the strongest possible bargaining position on the battlefield.

Reuters reported in February that Putin's suggestion of a ceasefire in Ukraine to freeze the war was rejected by the United States. In June, Putin suggested possible terms including demands that Kyiv drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from four provinces claimed by Moscow.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, after talks with China, said last month that Kyiv was prepared for talks on the conflict with Russia provided Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity were fully respected.

Kyiv says it is the victim of an imperial-style land grab by Putin and says it must gain control over all the land it has lost to Russia. The West says it cannot allow Putin to win.

Putin, in his June 14 speech, cast the war as part of a historic struggle with an arrogant West, which he said had ignored Russia's security concerns after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and plotted to dismember Russia.

INTENSE FIGHTING

Such a audacious attack against the world's biggest nuclear power was embarrassing for Putin's top military brass, which has repeatedly been criticised inside Russia by nationalists for its prosecution of the war.

Former Ukrainian defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told Reuters that the operation looked aimed at distracting Russian forces and its leadership from the eastern fronts.

By Sunday, Russia had stabilised the front in the Kursk region, though it had been forced to mobilise reserves and declare an anti-terrorist lockdown in Kursk and two other regions, Bryansk and Belgorod.

"Our armed forces are moving forward along the entire line of contact," Putin said.

Reuters has been unable to verify battlefield claims.

In Belgorod to the south, thousands of civilians were evacuated from the Krasnaya Yaruga District due to fears of a Ukrainian attack.

Russia's most senior general, chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov, told Putin on Wednesday that the Ukrainian offensive had been halted in the border area.

Russian bloggers have questioned why Ukraine was able to pierce the Kursk region so easily, and why it took so long to stabilise the situation.

Ukrainian forces in Kursk were trying to encircle Sudzha, where Russian natural gas flows into Ukraine, while major battles were underway near Korenevo, about 22 km (14 miles) from the border, and Martynovka.

Since the Aug. 6 border incursion into Kursk, the Russian rouble has weakened, losing 6% of its value against the U.S. dollar. Russia's Gazprom said it would send 39.6 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Monday.

(Reporting Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Crispian Balmer)