kyiv, Ukraine.- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said today that his country’s military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is aimed at creating a buffer zone to prevent further cross-border attacks by Moscow.
This is the first time that Zelenskyy has clearly addressed the goal of the operation, which was launched on August 6. He had previously said that the operation was intended to protect communities in the Sumy border region from constant shelling.
In his evening speech, Zelenskyy said that “now our main task in defensive operations in general is to destroy all possible Russian military potential and carry out maximum counteroffensive actions. This includes the creation of a buffer zone on the territory of the aggressor – our operation in the Kursk region.”
Over the weekend, Ukraine destroyed a crucial bridge in the Kursk region and attacked another nearby, disrupting Russian supply routes, officials said.
Pro-Kremlin Russian military bloggers acknowledged that the destruction of the first bridge, which spanned the Seim River near the town of Glushkovo, will complicate the delivery of supplies to Russian forces repelling the Ukrainian incursion, although Moscow could still use floating bridges and smaller bridges in the area. Ukrainian air force chief Lt. Mykola Oleshchuk on Friday posted a video of a Ukrainian airstrike breaking the structure in two.
Less than two days later, Ukrainian troops struck another bridge in Russia, according to Oleshchuk and the Russian regional governor, Alexei Smirnov.
By Sunday morning there were no official reports on where exactly the attack on the second bridge had taken place. Russian Telegram channels claimed that a second bridge over the Seim had been hit, in the village of Zvannoe.
According to the Russian news website Mash, the strikes left only one bridge intact in the area. The Associated Press could not immediately verify these claims, but if confirmed, the Ukrainian strikes would have complicated Moscow’s efforts to reinforce its contingent in Kursk and evacuate civilians.
Glushkovo is located about 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) north of the Ukrainian border and approximately 16 km (10 mi) northwest of the main combat zone at Kursk. Zvannoe is another 8 km (5 mi) further northwest.
kyiv had given little information about the aims of its operation in Russia, the biggest attack on the country since World War II, which took the Kremlin by surprise and left dozens of villages and hundreds of prisoners in Ukrainian hands.
Ukrainians pushed into the Kursk region in several directions, meeting little resistance and sowing panic and chaos as tens of thousands of civilians fled. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said last week that his forces had advanced over 1,000 square kilometers (390 square miles) in the Kursk region, although it was not possible to independently verify how much ground Ukrainian troops controlled.
Both sides seek buffer zones
In his remarks on the creation of a buffer zone, Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian forces “achieved good and much-needed results.”
Analysts say that while Ukraine could try to consolidate its gains on Russia, it would be a risky move given kyiv’s limited resources, because supply lines stretching into the heart of the Kursk would be vulnerable to Russian attacks.
The raid has shown Ukraine’s ability to take the offensive and boosted morale in Ukraine, which was dented by a failed counteroffensive last summer and months of creeping Russian advances in the eastern Donbas region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, said during his visit to China in May that Moscow’s offensive that month in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region was aimed at creating a buffer zone there.
That offensive opened a new front and displaced thousands of Ukrainians. The attacks were a response to Ukrainian airstrikes against Russia’s Belgorod region, Putin said.
“I have said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a security zone, a health zone,” he said. “That is what we are doing.”
The Ukrainian incursion is reminiscent of the lightning operation launched by Ukraine in September 2022, in which troops led by Syrskyi regained control of the Kharkiv region by taking advantage of Russia’s lack of troops and fortifications.
Zelenskyy asks for permission to attack inside Russia
Zelenskyy on Saturday urged Kiev’s allies to lift remaining restrictions on the use of Western weapons to strike more distant targets in Russia, including Kursk, saying his troops could deprive Moscow “of any ability to advance and cause destruction” if allowed sufficient range.
“It is crucial that our partners remove barriers that prevent us from weakening Russian positions as this war requires (…) The courage of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions by our partners,” Zelenskyy said in a post on the social network X.
The Russian Foreign Ministry and pro-Kremlin bloggers have alleged that US-made HIMARS launchers have been used to destroy bridges on the Seyim. It was not possible to independently verify these claims.
Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly sought permission to carry out long-range strikes against Russian air bases and other infrastructure used to attack targets in Ukraine, including modernized Soviet-era glider bombs that have devastated the east of the country in recent months.
Moscow also appears to have stepped up attacks on kyiv, using ballistic missiles against the Ukrainian capital early Sunday for the third time this month, according to the head of the city’s military administration. Serhii Popko said in a Telegram post that the “nearly identical” August attacks on the capital “almost certainly used” North Korean-supplied KN-23 missiles.
At around 7 a.m. there was a new attack on kyiv, Popko said, this time using Iskander cruise missiles. Ukrainian air defenses shot down all targets in those two attacks on the city on Sunday morning, he said.
Belarus says it has deployed more troops on the border with Ukraine
Belarus has deployed “almost a third” of its army along its border with Ukraine, according to President Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko told Russian state television that Minsk was responding to the deployment of more than 120,000 Ukrainian troops along the 1,084-kilometer (674-mile) border. Belarus’s professional army numbers more than 60,000 troops.
Ukrainian border forces spokesman Andrii Demchenko said on Sunday that he had not observed any signs of a Belarusian build-up.
Lukashenko, who has been in power for three decades, has relied on Russia’s support to suppress Belarus’s biggest post-Soviet protests following his 2020 re-election, which was widely seen as a farce at home and abroad. He allowed Russian troops to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine and let Moscow deploy some tactical nuclear weapons on its soil.
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