Russia launches new operation to halt advancing Ukrainian troops

Moscow - Russia on Aug 10 launched a “counter-terror operation” in three border regions adjoining Ukraine to halt Kyiv’s push deeper into Russia and warned that the fighting endangered a nuclear power plant.

Ukrainian units stormed across the border into Russia’s western Kursk region on the morning of Aug 6 in a shock attack, the largest and most successful cross-border offensive by Kyiv in the 2½-year conflict.

Its troops have advanced several kilometres and Russia’s army has rushed in extra troops and equipment, including convoys of tanks, rocket launchers and aviation units – though neither side has given precise details on the extent of the forces they have committed.

Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom on Aug 10 warned that the Ukrainian attack posed a “direct threat” to the nearby Kursk nuclear power station.

More than 76,000 people have been evacuated from areas bordering Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region.

“The war has come to us,” said one woman, who had fled the border zone, at a Moscow train station on Aug 9, declining to give her name.

Russia’s army, which confirmed it was still fighting off the Ukrainian incursion, said Kyiv initially crossed the border with around 1,000 troops, around 20 armoured vehicles and 11 tanks.

On Aug 10, it claimed to have since destroyed around five times as many pieces of military hardware.

AFP could not verify those numbers and both sides have repeatedly been accused of inflating the number of enemy losses while downplaying their own setbacks.

Unprecedented

Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said late on Aug 9 it was starting “counter-terror operations in the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions... in order to ensure the safety of citizens and suppress the threat of terrorist acts being carried out by the enemy’s sabotage groups”.

Under Russian law, security forces and the military are given sweeping emergency powers during “counter-terror” operations.

Movement is restricted, and vehicles can be seized, phone calls monitored, areas declared no-go zones, and checkpoints introduced, and security is beefed up at key infrastructure sites.

The anti-terrorism committee said Ukraine had mounted an “unprecedented attempt to destabilise the situation in a number of regions of our country”.

Russia on Aug 9 appeared to hit back at the incursion, launching a missile strike on a supermarket in the east Ukrainian town of Kostyantynivka that killed at least 14 people. Three people were killed in the north-eastern Kharkiv region on Aug 10, local officials said.

Ukraine also said it needed to evacuate 20,000 people from the Sumy region, just across the border from Kursk.

Neither side has provided details on the extent of the incursion.

Russia’s Defence Ministry on Aug 10 said it had hit some Ukrainian positions as far as 10km from the border.

It also reported hitting Ukrainian troops in areas 30km apart – an indication as to the breadth, as well as the depth of Ukraine’s advance.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War said it believed Ukrainian forces had pierced around 13km into Russian territory.

Belarus, Russia’s close ally, on Aug 10 ordered military reinforcements – ground troops, air units, air defence and rocket systems – to be deployed closer to its border with Ukraine in response to Kyiv’s incursion, the Defence Ministry in Minsk said.

Particularly effective

Moscow issued a nuclear warning over the fate of the Kursk nuclear power plant, under 50km from the combat zone, a day after the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency called for “maximum restraint”.

“The actions of the Ukrainian army pose a direct threat” to the Kursk plant in western Russia, state news agencies cited Rosatom as saying.

“At the moment, there is a real danger of strikes and provocations by the Ukrainian army,” it added.

Ukrainian leaders have remained tight-lipped on the operation, and the United States, Kyiv’s closest ally, said it was not informed of the plans in advance.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky has appeared to tout his troops’ early successes, saying earlier this week that Russia must “feel” the consequences of the full-scale offensive it has waged against Ukraine since February 2022. On Aug 9, he thanked Ukrainian troops for the “replenishment of the exchange fund” – language used to refer to the capture of Russian soldiers, who can later be swopped for captured Ukrainians.

“This is extremely important and has been particularly effective over the last three days,” he said, again without making any specific reference to the Kursk incursion.

Russian military bloggers, who typically post more open, detailed and timely information than the Defence Ministry in Moscow, previously reported several Russian soldiers had been taken prisoner by Ukraine.

Russia’s Defence Ministry published footage on Aug 10 of tank crews firing on Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region, as well as an overnight air strike, after it said it had deployed yet more units to the border region.

Elsewhere on the frontline, Ukrainian officials said a person was killed in the city of Kramatorsk.

The Ukrainian army on Aug 10 reported a reduced number of “combat engagements” inside Ukraine – a possible sign that its incursion into Russia could be working to relieve pressure on other parts of the sprawling front line where Moscow’s troops had been advancing. AFP