Kursk offensive hits Russia as Putin’s troops call in reserves – Ukraine war latest

Ukrainian volunteers evacuated dozens of residents, and their pets, from northern Sumy region in anticipation of more Russian attacks in response to Ukraine’s cross-border military incursion into the Kursk region.

Sumy Governor Volodymyr Artiukh ordered 28 villages evacuated from a 10 km (six-mile) zone hugging the border. National police said yesterday that 20,000 would have to leave.

Evacuee Serhiy Kozak said residents of the eight houses making up his village of Basivka had seen enough of war, launched when the Kremlin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

“Some houses have been hit twice, others three times,” he said. “There was another hit around this in the morning and I jumped out. And just before four, another hit. Panes of glass shattered. What else is there to say?”

The residents trundled toward the pick-up point, their overflowing carrier bags loaded onto carts, as Russian forces intensified aerial guided bomb attacks.

Kozak said the latest attacks involved planes flying in over the border from Kursk region. “They dropped a load of ammunition at Basivka, diverted and left. The same with helicopters, they fly over the border and start shelling.”

The evacuees, many relying on canes for support, were helped into mini-vans by volunteers in bullet proof vests and taken to reception centres outside the danger zone. Pets were hoisted in alongside them, one dog stuffed into a small carrier bag.

Ukrainian officials have remained largely silent about the incursion into Kursk region, but unofficial reports from both sides note that four days into the operation they are advancing.

Volunteer Vlad Polyansky from the group SOS East, said 24 people were picked up and transported throughout the day on Friday.

“With the operation going on in Kursk region, hardly anyone would think that Moscow is going to like this,” he said. “We expect the shelling of border areas to get worse.”

Svitlana Linova, pushing her bicycle with her cat Murchik in its carrier, was in no doubt it was time to go.

“There was such heavy shelling yesterday from the other side of the border,” she said. “The lamp and ceiling started to fall.”

She said she had untied her neighbours’ dogs and let them go free when it became apparent they would not be returning anytime soon.

James Nixey, director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Chatham House think tank, said the gains proved to allies such as the US and UK that Ukraine is still “in it to win it”, adding that the Americans “love to back a winner”.

Mark Galeotti, one of the world’s leading experts on Russian security, said the element of surprise in the attack had been vital.

“It’s the biggest attack on Russia since the Nazis… There’s no getting away from that – it shows Ukraine has a capability and a will which caught the Russians by surprise. It’s a huge embarrassment for Putin.

“It has shown this classic case of the Ukrainians being fast, nimble, smart and unexpected, and the lumbering Russian bear being caught off guard.”

But he added a note of caution, warning that the Ukrainian aggression could play into Putin’s need to galvanise his own people.

Nearly 1,000 troops, backed by artillery fire and tanks, have pushed miles into Russian territory, forcing residents to flee and the Russian president to call up reservists to help his forces who were caught off guard.

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Intense battles are taking place between Ukrainian forces and Moscow’s troops after one of the largest incursions into Russian territory since Vlasimir Putin’s invasion began – prompting the Russian president to accuse Kyiv of a “major provocation”.

The surprise incursion began on Tuesday morning, when hundreds of Ukrainian troops reportedly entered the Kursk region according to Russia’s Defence Ministry and the area’s governor, Alexei Smirnov. Kyiv has so far remained quiet about the scope of the operation.

Ukraine is reportedly gaining a “foothold” in the Kursk region and could be as far as nine miles (15km) inside the border, according to unverified reports from Russian military bloggers. Telegram Channels affiliated with Russia’s Defence Ministry have claimed that Ukrainian troops are in control of three villages in the Sudzha district of Russia’s Kursk region, which borders the Sumy region of northeast Ukraine.

The move into Russian territory is much more dramatic than previous Ukrainian morale-boosting coups.

But rather than a fight to the finish, like the Second World War, it could lead to compromise, writes Mark Almond:

Russia declared a “federal-level” emergency in the Kursk region following a large-scale incursion from Ukraine and sent reinforcements there on Friday, four days after hundreds of Ukrainian troops poured across the border in what appeared to be Kyiv’s biggest attack on Russian soil since the war began.

Meanwhile, a Russian plane-launched missile slammed into a Ukrainian shopping mall in the middle of the day, killing at least 14 people and wounding 44 others, authorities said.

The mall in Kostiantynivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, is located in the town’s residential area. Thick black smoke rose above it after the strike.

“This is another targeted attack on a crowded place, another act of terror by the Russians,” Donetsk regional head Vadym Filashkin said in a Telegram post.

It was the second major strike on the town in almost a year. Last September, a Russian missile hit an outdoor market there, killing 17.

The roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line remains largely deadlocked.

But at points in the east, especially in the Donetsk region. Russia is making a concerted push. Its army is exploiting the dry land to move its armor, the bushy tree lines for infantry cover, and the clear skies to launch powerful glide bombs that obliterate Ukrainian defenses.

The Russian advance is slow but relentless. Russia’s hallmark tactics are to use its artillery, missiles and bombs to reduce villages and hamlets to ruins, denying Ukrainians defensive cover and compelling them to pull back.

Moscow’s forces look to exploit weaknesses in the Ukrainian lines, driving a wedge into sections where troops levels are lower or where soldiers are being rotated out, analysts say.

The Russians are now menacing some key Ukrainian strongholds, whose fall would put the rest of the Donetsk region at risk: Pokrovsk, Toretsk and Chasiv Yar.

Russian forces are now 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Pokrovsk, an important logistics hub that supports Ukrainian forces in the region, the U.K. Defense Ministry said Friday. Russia also continues to consolidate gains in Niu-York and is advancing toward Toretsk, the ministry said.

“Right now, the momentum is clearly on Russia’s side,” says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in Washington. Even so, he says, the overall battlefield situation is “much closer to a stalemate.”

A Russian businessman released as part of last week’s prisoner swap between Russia and the West is dropping his appeal of his U.S. conviction for engaging in a hack-and-trade scheme, after being informed that any further litigation could jeopardize the commutation of his sentence, his lawyer said today.

Vladislav Klyushin had been serving a nine-year prison sentence after a federal jury in Boston last year found him guilty of participating in a $93 million insider-trading scheme that relied on secret earnings information obtained through hacking.

Klyushin, who owned a Moscow-based information technology company called M-13 that did work for the Russian government, had been in the midst of an appeal when he was released in the 24 prisoner exchange on 1 August.

Maksim Nemtsev, his lawyer, told Reuters in an email that immediately after the swap it was not clear whether Klyushin could continue pursuing his appeal, which raised “unprecedented legal issues.”

But Nemtsev said the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney took the position that a clause in the grant of clemency President Joe Biden signed commuting Klyushin’s sentence required the Russian to waive his appellate rights.

According to court papers, Biden or his successor has the discretion to void the commutation and have Klyushin’s sentence reinstated if the president determines any condition of his grant of clemency is violated.

Given the government’s position, Klyushin on Thursday informed the court he would “not take further action on his appeal.”

“If there was no language prohibiting it, we would have pushed forward,” Nemtsev said.

The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.