Ukraine war briefing: Belgorod declares emergency, Kursk ‘real dilemma’ for Putin says Biden

The governor of Russia’s border area of Belgorod , Vyacheslav Gladkov, declared a regionwide state of emergency on Wednesday. Ukraine’s military has been hitting back across the border after a stalled push by Russian forces into the Kharkiv region. “The situation in the Belgorod region continues to be extremely difficult and tense,” Gladkov said, adding that he was appealing to Vladimir Putin’s government to declare a federal emergency situation.

Ukraine launched more than 35 drones on Russia’s Voronezh region on Tuesday night, said Alexander Gusev, governor of the region which is several hundred kilometres south of Moscow.

It comes after Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, which the US president, Joe Biden, addressed for the first time on Tuesday. “It’s creating a real dilemma for Putin , and we’ve been in direct contact, constant contact, with the Ukrainians. That’s all I’m going to say about it while it’s active.” Answering questions from reporters in New Orleans, Biden said he had been briefed every four to five hours for the last six to eight days on Ukraine’s action.

The goal of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion appears to be to force Russia to pull troops out of Ukraine to defend Russian territory against the Ukrainian cross-border assault, a US official said on Tuesday, quoted by the Reuters news agency. A week after Ukrainian forces launched their surprise attack, Russian authorities are scrambling to bring the situation in Kursk under control, Shaun Walker writes . The Biden administration has insisted it had no advance knowledge and no involvement in the operation.

In an explainer using maps, footage and photos , Peter Beaumont writes that Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed on Monday that Ukraine controlled about 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of the Kursk region. The claim was largely confirmed on the Russian side . Alexei Smirnov, acting governor of the Kursk region, told the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, via a videoconference on Monday that Ukrainian forces controlled 28 Russian settlements including towns and villages up to 18 miles (30km) inside Russia.

Dan Sabbagh writes from the border of Ukraine’s Sumy and Russia’s Kursk regions: “The Sudzha crossing is now 5 miles or so from the current frontline inside Russia’s Kursk oblast. For now at least, it remains very much in Ukrainian hands a full week into the border incursion .”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Kyiv’s forces had rounded up Russian prisoners of war to be used as an “exchange fund” for captured Ukrainian fighters. “Despite difficult and intense battles, our forces continue to advance in the Kursk region, and our state’s ‘exchange fund’ is growing. Seventy-four settlements are under Ukrainian control,” Zelenskiy said.
Shown speaking by video link, Zelenskiy asked his top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, to develop the next “key steps” in the operation. “Everything is being executed according to the plan,” Syrskyi replied, without elaborating.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Tuesday that Russia needs to be forced to participate in a summit on peace as it would not do so willingly. “Simple calls to Russia do not work, only a set of coercive tools works,” he said, meaning economic and diplomatic pressure as well as the invasion of Kursk. By actions inside Russia, Ukraine was resolving the key issue of its own security. “This is destruction of war infrastructure and formation of so-called sanitary zones so that Russia cannot use there … equipment that strikes deep into the territory of Ukraine .”

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy on Tuesday said Kyiv was not interested in “taking over” Russian territory and defended Ukraine’s actions as “absolutely legitimate”. “The sooner Russia agrees to restore a just peace … the sooner the raids by the Ukrainian defence forces into Russia will stop.”

“They didn’t protect the border,” a Ukrainian serviceman who took part in the offensive and identified himself as Ruzhyk told Agence France-Presse in the 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.” A 27-year-old squad leader, who identified himself as Faraon, said: “I saw a lot of death in the first few days. It was terrifying at first but then we got used to it. There have been many deaths,” he repeated, without elaborating. Ukrainian military analyst Mykola Bielieskov told AFP: “ Russian complacency prevailed. Russia assumed that since it had initiative elsewhere, Ukraine wouldn’t dare to do things we’ve seen.”

At the UN security council, Russia attempted to attack Ukraine’s allies over the Kursk invasion but was met with retorts about its own war of aggression against its neighbour. “We will not recognise the aggressor as the victim,” said senior Slovenian diplomat Klemen Ponikvar. “There is no question as to which country has committed numerous well-documented atrocities, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, on Ukraine’s sovereign territory,” said US diplomat Caleb Pine. “That country is Russia.” British diplomat Kate Jones said allies would “never falter in our support for Ukraine” to secure “just and sustainable peace based on the principles of the UN charter and international law”. Diplomats from Syria, Belarus and North Korea spoke in support of Russia.

Russian shelling killed at least one civilian and injured two more in Ukraine’s Sumy region, said the local administration across the border from Kursk.
It said 45 Russian attacks on the region had been recorded on Tuesday, including guided bomb strikes, explosions from drones, and shelling. Ukraine’s military on Tuesday restricted the movement of civilians within a 20km (12 mile) zone of the north-eastern border area.