Russia strikes back at Ukrainian forces in Kursk region

By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian forces on Tuesday struck back at Ukrainian troops with missiles, drones and airstrikes in actions that one senior commander said had halted Ukraine's advance after the biggest attack on sovereign Russian territory since the war began.

Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through the Russian border a week ago in a surprise attack that Russian President Vladimir Putin said was aimed at improving Kyiv's negotiating position ahead of possible talks and slowing the advance of Russian forces along the front.

The Ukrainian forces carved out a slice of Russian territory, prompting Moscow to evacuate almost 200,000 people while it rushed in reserves.

Russian war bloggers reported intense battles across the Kursk front as the Ukrainians tried to expand their control, though they said Russia was bringing in soldiers and heavy weaponry and had repelled many Ukrainian attacks.

Russia's defence ministry published images of Sukhoi Su-34 bombers striking at what it said were Ukrainian troops in the Kursk border region and said it had repelled attacks at villages about 26-28 km (16-17 miles) from the border.

Russian forces had destroyed a total of 35 Ukrainian tanks, 31 armoured personnel carriers, 18 infantry fighting vehicles, and 179 other armoured vehicles during in the week-long battle, it said.

"The uncontrolled ride of the enemy has already been halted," said Major General Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces unit. "The enemy is already aware that the blitzkrieg that it planned did not work out."

It was not clear which side was in control of the Russian town of Sudzha, through which Russia delivers gas from Western Siberia through Ukraine and on to Slovakia and other European Union countries. Gazprom said Tuesday it was still pumping gas to Ukraine through Sudzha.

Kursk's acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said on Monday that Ukraine controlled 28 settlements in the region, and the incursion was about 12 km deep and 40 km wide. Ukraine claimed it controlled 1,000 square km (386 square miles) of Russian, more than double what the Russian figures indicate.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western leaders said they would help Ukraine defeat Russian troops on the battlefield and drive them out.

Ukraine recaptured large swathes of territory in 2022. But its counteroffensive in 2023 failed to pierce heavily dug-in Russian lines, and Russian forces have been advancing this year deeper into Ukrainian territory. Russia controls just under one fifth of territory internationally recognised as Ukraine.

PUTIN PLEDGE

At his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Putin told officials that Russia would force out the Ukrainian troops, saying Russian forces were speeding up their advance along other parts of the front.

Still, the foreign occupation of Russian land was an embarrassment for the army and for Putin. The Ukrainian incursion is the most serious into Russia since the June 1941 invasion by Nazi Germany, which turned on the 1943 Battle of Kursk.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in his nightly address that the operation in Russia was a matter of Ukrainian security and the Kursk region had been used by Russia to launch many strikes against Ukraine.

But by dedicating forces to Kursk, Ukraine may leave other parts of the front exposed just as Russia has been advancing. Russia which has a far larger army, could try to encircle Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine's Western backers, which have been keen to avoid an escalation of the war into a direct confrontation between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO, said they had no prior warning of the Ukrainian offensive.

Putin said the West was using Ukraine to fight a proxy war with Russia and the border incursion was an attempt to undermine Russian domestic stability.

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said Zelenskiy was taking crazy steps that risked an escalation far beyond Ukraine's borders.

In Kursk, 121,000 people had already left or have been evacuated and another 59,000 were in the process of being evacuated, local officials said. In Russia's Belgorod region, which borders Kursk, 11,000 civilians were also evacuated, the region's governor said.

(Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Angus MacSwan)