Russia is embarrassed as Ukraine pounded the western region of Kursk with missiles and drones on Wednesday as Kyiv said it was advancing deeper in the biggest foreign incursion into Russia for decades. The White House said it posed a “real dilemma” for President Vladimir Putin.
Thousands of Ukrainian troops rammed through the Russian border in the early hours of Aug. 6 into Russia’s western Kursk region in what Putin said was a major provocation that was aimed at gaining a stronger hand in possible future ceasefire talks.
Ukraine carved out a slice of Kursk and though Putin said the Russian army would push out the Ukrainian troops, intense battles have so far failed to expel them.
“The situation still remains difficult,” said Yuri Podolyaka, an influential Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger. “The enemy still has the initiative, and so, albeit slowly, it is increasing its presence in the Kursk region.”
Russia said on Wednesday that it had destroyed 117 Ukrainian drones in Russia overnight, mostly in the Kursk, Voronezh and Belgorod and Nizhny Novgorod regions. It said missiles had also been shot down and showed Sukhoi Su-34 bombers pounding Ukrainian positions in Kursk.
Russian commanders had said that the front in Kursk had stabilised, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his forces were continuing to advance there and ordered his generals to develop the next “key steps” in the operation.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that U.S. officials were in constant touch with Ukraine over the invasion of Russia, which he said had “created a real dilemma” for Putin, who ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022.
The White House said Ukraine did not provide advance notice of its incursion and the United States had no involvement in the operation, though Russian officials have suggested Ukraine’s Western backers must have known of the attack.
A U.S. official said the goal of the Kursk incursion appeared to be to force Russia to pull troops out of Ukraine to defend Russian territory against the cross-border assault.
The Ukrainian assault on Russia, the biggest by a foreign force since World War Two, has dramatically changed the narrative around the war. Russia had been advancing since the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive to make any major gains against Moscow’s forces.
With Reuters inputs
