Moscow has pulled some troops out of southern Ukraine to fend off Kyiv’s incursion that has seized about 400 square miles of land in Russia, according to a new report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his advisers have been left scrambling to respond to Kyiv’s surprise attack over the border last week, with officials diverting troops from the western front to try to fight off Ukrainian forces occupying dozens of settlements in the Kursk region.
“Russia has relocated some of its units from both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine’s south,” Ukrainian army spokesman Dmytro Lykhoviy told Politico.
It’s unclear how many troops have been relocated to fight in Kursk, but Lykhovity said it was a “relatively small” number of units.
While Ukraine has kept mum over its goals in suddenly mounting a large incursion into Russia, experts have speculated that the attack aims to force Russia to pull back from the front lines, where it has been making slow but significant gains.
Kyiv’s ambitious attack has been a source of humiliation for Putin, who was reportedly angry during a meeting with top officials Monday as he demanded answers over Ukraine’s successful incursion that has forced some 200,000 people to evacuate despite years-long propaganda that the war would not affect everyday life in Russia.
Aleksey Smirnov, acting chief of the Kursk region, told the Kremlin at the meeting that at least 28 settlements have been captured by Ukraine, with their forces operating as deep as 7.5 miles into Russia.
“Russia brought war to others, and now it is coming home,” Zelensky said Monday in one of his first public acknowledgments of the incursion.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, said his forces were in control of nearly 400 square miles in the Kursk border region.
Moscow on Tuesday struck back at Ukrainian troops with missiles, drones and airstrikes — which one senior commander claimed had halted Ukraine’s advance.
Russia’s defense ministry also published footage of bombers striking at what it said were Ukrainian troops in the Kursk border region and of infantry storming Ukrainian positions.
Putin has vowed to “kick out” the Ukrainian forces as he slammed the offensive as nothing more than Ukraine’s attempt to stop Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and gain leverage in possible future peace talks.
“It’s obvious that the enemy will keep trying to destabilize the situation in the border zone to try to destabilize the domestic political situation in our country,” Putin said Monday.
