Ukraine says it has no interest in occupying Russia’s Kursk region

KYIV – Ukraine said on Aug 13 that it has no interest in occupying territory in Russia’s Kursk region, and that its major cross-border incursion would complicate the Russian military’s logistics and ability to send more units to fight in Ukraine’s east.

The comments by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman come a week after Kyiv’s forces launched a cross-border assault into the western Russian region of Kursk. Ukraine says its forces have taken control of 1,000 sq km of land.

“Unlike Russia, Ukraine does not need other people’s property. Ukraine is not interested in taking the territory of the Kursk region, but we want to protect the lives of our people,” spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi told reporters in Kyiv.

Russian forces on Aug 13 struck back at Ukrainian troops with missiles, drones and air strikes in actions that one senior commander said had halted Ukraine’s advance after the biggest attack on sovereign Russian territory since the war began.

Ukraine had pummelled two Russian regions with drones on the same day as its ground forces tried to smash through defensive lines in a bid to carve out even more territory.

Ukrainian soldiers crossed the Russian border

about 530km south-west of Moscow a week ago, in a surprise attack that Russian President Vladimir Putin said was aimed at improving Kyiv’s negotiating position ahead of possible talks and slowing the advance of Russian forces along the rest of the front.

Russian war bloggers reported intense battles across the Kursk front as Ukrainian forces tried to expand their control near Lgov, Bolshoy Soldatskoye and Korenevo – though they said Russia was bringing in both soldiers and heavy weaponry and repelled some of the Ukrainian attacks.

Russia’s Defence Ministry published images of Sukhoi Su-34 bombers striking at what it said were Ukrainian troops in the Kursk border region and said it had repelled attacks at villages about 26km to 28km from the border.

Russian forces had destroyed a total of 35 Ukrainian tanks, 31 armoured personnel carriers, 18 infantry fighting vehicles and 179 other armoured vehicles in the week-long battle, it said.

Major-General Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces unit, said: “The uncontrolled ride of the enemy has already been halted. The enemy is already aware that the blitzkrieg that it planned did not work out.”

Russia and Ukraine have given vastly different estimates of the area of Russian territory under Ukrainian control, with Kyiv claiming 1,000 sq km but Russian officials saying it was less than half of that.

The fate of the town of Sudzha, through which Russia pumps gas from Western Siberia to Ukraine and on to Slovakia and other European Union countries, was unclear.

Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Aug 12 that it was still pumping.

Some Russian war bloggers and Ukrainian Telegram channels said the town was under the control of Ukraine, though Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield accounts and Russia has yet to give details on the situation in Sudzha.

About 14.65 billion cubic m of gas was supplied via Sudzha in 2023 – about half of Russian natural gas exports to Europe, or about 5 per cent of EU consumption.

The Ukrainian attack has underscored how effective small, highly mobile units can be against the vastly numerically superior Russian army, though by dedicating forces to Kursk, Ukraine could weaken other parts of the front.

Russia on Aug 12 reported that it was gaining in other parts of the front, though Moscow has had to move reserves to halt the Ukrainian advance.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians in his nightly address that the operation was a matter of Ukrainian security and that the Kursk region had been used by Russia to launch many strikes against Ukraine. “Russia must be forced to make peace if Putin wants to fight so badly,” he said.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022

and now controls 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory.

Until the surprise attack on Russia, Ukraine had been losing territory to Russian forces despite hundreds of billions of dollars in US and European support aimed at stopping and even reversing the Russian advance.

In Kursk, 121,000 people had already left or have been evacuated, and another 59,000 were in the process of being evacuated, local officials said.

In Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Kursk, 11,000 civilians were also evacuated, the region’s governor said.

Ukraine’s air force said on Aug 13 that Russia launched 38 attack drones and two ballistic missiles on Ukraine overnight. The whole country was briefly under air raid alerts early on Aug 13, but these have since been called off. REUTERS