Kyiv said Friday its incursion into Russian territory had advanced, claiming it aimed to force Russia to negotiate on “fair” terms, as Moscow’s troops announced new gains in eastern Ukraine.
Two and a half years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s troops last week launched a major counter-offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, sending more than 120,000 people fleeing.
The head of the Ukrainian military Oleksandr Syrsky told President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday that “the troops continue to fight and have advanced in some areas from one to three kilometres (0.6 to 1.8 miles) towards the enemy.”
The president said in his evening address: “We see that the occupier is suffering losses, and this is useful, very useful for our defence.”
Zelensky’s aide Mykhailo Podolyak said earlier Friday that Ukraine wanted to negotiate “on our own terms” by inflicting “significant tactical defeats on Russia”.
“We have absolutely no plans to beg: ‘Please, sit down to negotiate’, he wrote on X, saying that Kyiv in the Kursk region is using military means to “persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process”.
Ukraine has ruled out any talks with Russia if Russian troops do not leave its territory.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia would declare a ceasefire only if Kyiv withdraws from the four regions that Russia claims to have annexed but only partially controls — Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Ukraine meanwhile claims to have seized more than 1,100 square kilometres of Russian territory, in the biggest attack by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II.
‘Very scared’
“I was very scared, very scared,” Nina Golinyaeva, a former resident of the border town of Sudzha, told AFP at an evacuation centre in Kursk city, the regional capital.
“Shells were flying from all sides, helicopters, planes, fighter jets were flying over the house,” she said, recounting a dramatic night-time escape amid the fighting.
Some evacuees were sheltering in a Kursk circus building, including Galina Shugayeva, a 54-year-old teacher who had also fled Sudzha, which Ukraine claimed to fully control on Thursday.
“We thought we were leaving for a couple of days, maybe,” she said, recalling her fear at the shelling and a night spent in a cellar.
“We took with us the most precious thing there is: our lives,” she summed up.
Kyiv claims to have taken control of more than 80 settlements in the lightning incursion.
The governor of the Kursk region said on Monday that Ukraine had seized 28 settlements.
In the neighbouring Belgorod region, which has also come under heavy fire, the governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced residents will be removed from five border villages from Monday and access closed.
‘Show them who’s boss’
The attack has been a morale boost for Ukraine, where many say it is giving Russian civilians a taste of what Ukrainians have been facing on a daily basis since the start of Russia’s full-scale assault in February 2022.
In a border village in Ukraine’s Sumy region, Natalia, 47, whose house was damaged by a recent Russian strike, told AFP that Ukrainian troops are “showing them who’s boss”.
“Let them give (Russia) a hammering for every child’s tear,” she said, weeping.
But the incursion appears to have had little impact on the larger battles raging in Russian-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine.
The Russian defence ministry on Friday said its troops had captured another village near the Ukrainian-held logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
The head of Pokrovsk’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, has urged people to evacuate.
“The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said on Telegram.
On the other side of the front line, Russian-installed authorities said at least 11 people were injured by a Ukrainian strike on a supermarket in the Russian-held city of Donetsk.
In Kursk region, a pro-Kremlin organisation said two of its employees helping evacuations were killed by a strike on their car.
Russia’s defence ministry also said it had repelled a night-time attack using 12 US-made missiles on the landmark Crimea bridge built on the orders of Putin after Moscow annexed the peninsula.
Kyiv has launched multiple attacks and attempted attacks on the Kerch Bridge since Moscow began its military offensive.
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