After Kyiv’s biggest push into Russian territory since the war’s beginning, Moscow’s soldiers were engaged in fierce combat for the sixth day on Sunday, leaving the southwest regions of Russia exposed until reinforcements began to arrive
On Saturday, Russian authorities moved quickly to evacuate citizens and enforced a strict security regime in three border regions. Meanwhile, Belarus, a close ally of Moscow, dispatched additional troops to its border with Ukraine, alleging that Kyiv had violated its airspace.
During his weekly video speech, Zelenskiy stated that he had spoken with Oleksandr Syrskyi, the chief commander of Ukraine, about the operation. He also promised to reply in kind if Russia invaded its neighbor in full in February 2022.
“Today, I received several reports from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor’s territory,” he said on Saturday night.
“Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and is ensuring the exact kind of pressure that is needed – pressure on the aggressor.”
Russia’s defense ministry claims that throughout the course of the previous evening, it shot down eighteen Ukrainian drones over various Russian territories that Ukraine frequently targets and four Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles over the Kursk region.
It described the ground invasion as “barbaric” and stated it made no military sense, according to military analysts who claim it took the Kremlin off guard.
Russia holds more than 100,000 square kilometers of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory, whereas Ukraine has only at most controlled a few tens of square kilometers of Russian land without making a claim to it.
Valery Gerasimov, the head of Russia’s military, declared on Wednesday that the attacks had stopped, but he did not order the Ukrainian forces to retreat across the border.
After Russia’s reinforcements, according to Russian military bloggers, the situation had stabilized, but Ukraine was rapidly amassing more troops
INJURIES AND EVACUATIONS
Thirteen people were injured in Kursk early on Sunday, according to city officials, when debris from a downed Ukrainian missile crashed onto a nine-story residential structure.
The mayor of Kursk shared a picture on social media that showed flames shooting from a broken apartment building encircled by burned rubble.
Whether there was more damage was unclear. The actual extent of the damage caused by strikes on Moscow and Kyiv is rarely disclosed, unless there are casualties or damage to residential structures.
The acting governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, instructed local officials to expedite the evacuation of population from high-risk locations. Over 76,000 individuals have been evacuated, according to a report released on Saturday by Russia’s official news agency, TASS.
The war, which has claimed hundreds of lives and forced millions of Ukrainians to flee their homes and has no sign of ending, is something that both Kyiv and Moscow deny targeting civilians in their attacks.
Some Russian military bloggers have questioned why Ukraine was able to breach the Kursk region with such ease, claiming that battle is occurring as far inside as 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the area.
Following the deaths of a father and his 4-year-old kid on Sunday in an airstrike by Russia close to Kyiv, Zelenskiy requested “strong decisions” from Ukraine’s Western allies that would permit his troops to use Western weapons to launch strikes deep within Russia.
“When Ukraine’s long-range capabilities have no limits, this war will definitely have a limit,” he stated on X.
Tatyana Moskalkova, the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights, said she had written to the UN requesting that it denounce Ukraine’s conduct in Kursk.
Moskalkova claimed she was requesting that the UN Human Rights commissioner “take measures to prevent gross mass violations of human rights” in a post on Telegram.
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