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. Russia's Defense Ministry said reinforcements were on their way to Kursk to counter Ukraine's daring raid, per the AP.
"The operational situation in the Kursk region remains difficult," Alexei Smirnov, Kursk's acting governor, said on Telegram. The Russian Defense Ministry also reported fighting in the western outskirts of Sudzha, about 6 miles from the border. The town has an important pipeline transit hub for Russian natural gas. Social services and civic associations are providing assistance to people forced to flee their homes by the fighting, he said. The last Russian figure for those evacuated from Kursk was 3,000. Little reliable information about the surprise Ukrainian operation has emerged, and its strategic aims are unclear.
But a top adviser to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said border region attacks will cause Russia to "start to realize that the war is slowly creeping inside of Russian territory." Mykhailo Podolyak also suggested that the operation would improve Kyiv's hand in the event of negotiations with Moscow. The attack "is a massive symbol, a massive display of force [showing] that the war is not frozen, the war is coming to you," said Mathieu Boulegue, a defense analyst at the Chatham House think tank in London. 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.
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