Thousands of Ukraine troops ready to defend land captured in daring attack into Russia

Ukrainian soldiers and officials tell Askold Krushelnycky that Kyiv’s military wants to prolong the humiliation of Putin over surprise assault on Kursk for as long as possible – as army says it has taken 1,000 square kilometres of territory

Ukrainian servicemen drive Soviet-made T-64 tanks in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia (AFP/Getty)

This isn’t a short jaunt into Russia as a propaganda exercise,” a colonel connected to the general staff of Ukraine’s army says of Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russian soil. “This operation has been long in the planning and has serious aims and Ukrainian forces will stay for some time in Russia.”

Backing up the colonel’s assessment, an official who has worked for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration as an adviser and in a variety of other important roles, says the Kursk assault will not be a brief incursion but is likely to broaden its scope with the intention of holding onto captured territory. He said that thousands more troops – potentially several brigades – are standing by, “including some of the best, most experienced troops and brigades” to fight.

Moscow’s forces are still scrambling to respond to the cross-border assault by Kyiv’s troops after almost a week of fierce fighting in the Kursk region, which borders northeast Ukraine. Acting Kursk governor Alexei Smirnov reported to Russian president Vladimir Putin that Ukrainian forces had pushed at least 7.5 miles (12km) over the border across a 24-mile front and currently control 28 Russian settlements. Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said around 390 sq m (1,000 sq km) in the Kursk region are under the control of his country’s troops.

Mr Smirnov said that 121,000 people have been evacuated or left the areas affected by fighting on their own. The total planned number of evacuations is 180,000. He added that 12 civilians had been killed and 121 others, including 10 children, had been wounded in the operation.

Ukrainian forces swiftly rolled into the town of Sudzha, about six miles over the border, after launching the attack. They reportedly still hold the western part of the town, which is the site of an important natural gas transit station conveying Russian gas to Western Europe.

A Ukrainian general staff situation report on Monday stated that advance units of its military had moved deeper into Russian territory and that some units were digging in and aiming to fortify captured territory while others regrouped, conducted reconnaissance or advanced toward Olgov, Rilsk, and Bolshoye Soldatskoe, the latter lying along the route to the regional capital, Kursk City, and sitting about 25 miles beyond Sudzha.

Moscow was rushing reinforcements to the area where Ukrainian troops were fanning out – and insisting, as it has falsely done for days, that forces had checked or, in places, repelled the Ukrainian advance and inflicted large casualties. But some pro-Kremlin military bloggers, who often report more truthfully than official Moscow sources, wrote of continuing Ukrainian momentum and a lack of coordination and disarray in the Russian military’s response.

Burnt-out remains of cars in a town in the Kursk region on Monday (Reuters)

The Ukrainian official says: “It’s true that the operation has lifted the morale of the general Ukrainian population but it was not conceived as merely a PR exercise. Ukraine does not expend its soldiers’ lives just to get some propaganda points.”

He says that one of the aims was to fortify Ukraine’s northern and eastern borders with Russia and its ally, Belarus, including the Kharkiv region which has been under relentless attack for months. In May, Kremlin forces launched an incursion from across the Kharkiv region’s northern border and rapidly captured a cluster of small towns and villages. Fierce fighting has continued ever since, with Ukrainian troops stemming further Russian advances which Moscow hoped would bring its plentiful Soviet-era artillery close enough to pummel the region’s eponymous capital, Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.

The Ukrainian official says: “Part of the purpose of the operation is that Ukraine wants to create a deep buffer zone on the Russian side of the border to protect Kharkiv and all other Ukrainian territory that is currently vulnerable to cross-border raids and artillery attacks by Russia. The current operation will put pressure on the Russians to withdraw from northern Kharkiv where they invaded in May.”

The official adds that Ukrainian forces now in Kursk had already destroyed Russian military facilities and their mission is to advance to eliminate other Russian bases, particularly air bases from which deadly glide bombs, which have targeted Ukrainian cities, are launched, and locations from which Moscow can fire missiles into Ukrainian border areas.

President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with security officials to discuss Kursk (via Reuters)

“Another key reason for the offensive,” the source explains, “is to use occupied Russian territory as a bargaining chip in any future peace negotiations to trade for Ukrainian-occupied land.” He said that, unlike at a recent peace conference in Switzerland to which Moscow was not invited, Russia would be asked to a follow-up conference which he mooted might take place in the autumn.

There has been no let-up this year in fierce fighting along the 600-mile front lines which have remained mostly static. Russian forces have been unable to make any major breakthrough but, by sheer force of numbers, vastly larger quantities of weapons and a chilling disregard for their massive casualties, Moscow has made slow incremental gains.

Kyiv has never ruled out peace talks although it has said it wouldn’t negotiate with an enemy that only wants Ukraine’s total surrender before the eradication of Ukrainian nationhood and the elimination of its culture.

The Ukraine colonel says: “An aim of the operation into Kursk is to allow Ukraine to enter any peace negotiations from a position of strength.”

The offensive into Russia has humiliated its president and shattered Russian complacency about achieving victory through prolonged, bloody attrition. Mr Putin, angered by the largest attack on Russian soil since the Second World War, has vowed revenge.

“The main task, of course, is for the defence ministry to squeeze out, to knock out the enemy from our territories,” he said on Monday. “The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response,” he added, also saying that the Kursk assault was aimed at improving Kyiv’s negotiating position ahead of possible peace talks.

Most Ukrainians are braced for a series of vengeful attacks and, going by the Kremlin’s track record, these will be against both military and civilian targets.

The Ukrainian government suspects that a blaze, this weekend, at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear station, which has been occupied by Russian military since 2022, is a warning by Moscow of what that vengeance could look like.

Russia predictably blamed Ukrainian missiles or drones for causing the blaze at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency said there had been no radioactive leaks at the facility, all six of whose reactors have been shut down for two years. Mr Zelensky called it “blackmail” by Moscow.

In the Belgorod region, adjacent to Kursk, thousands of civilians were also evacuated on Monday due to fears of a Ukrainian attack.