Hundreds of Ukrainian troops rolled into western Russia on Tuesday in what seems to be the embattled nation’s largest raid on its invading neighbor since the war began more than two years ago.
The Ukrainian force — which the Russians said included about 300 troops, 11 tanks and 20 armored vehicles — charged into the Kursk region and appears to have captured a number of settlements around the village of Sudzha, roughly eight miles from the border, according to ABC News.
Troops have also entered Sudzha itself, home to an important pipeline that supplies gas to the rest of Europe, according to Russian military bloggers and online videos.
The mini-invasion — which prompted mass evacuations amongst a second day of heavy fighting — led Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to hurriedly meet with his government and defense leadership, the network said.
Putin lambasted the assault as a “large-scale provocation” and claimed it involved “indiscriminate shelling of civilian buildings, residential houses, ambulances with different types of weapons.”
The Russian Defense Ministry initially said it had repelled the attack — with Gen. Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia’s general staff, telling Putin on Wednesday the Ukrainians had suffered hundreds of dead and wounded during the fight.
But it quickly became clear that the Russians had not won the shining victory they claimed, and that the Ukrainians had advanced into at least 11 settlements since Tuesday, according to Rybar, a prominent military blog that’s reportedly close to the Defense Ministry.
The shelling has killed at least two people and wounded about two dozen, Kursk officials have said.
Civilian videos posted online showed a chaotic situation along the border — with some depicting dozens of Russian soldiers taken prisoner on Sudzha’s outskirts, ABC said.
The Russian propaganda machine was at a full roar in the wake of the attack, with acting Gov. Alexei Smirnov saying on Telegram that “in the last 24 hours, our region has been heroically resisting attacks” by the Ukrainians.
The Defense Ministry also claimed that the Russian military “continued to destroy Ukrainian military units in the areas alongside the border in the Kursk region.”
Although Ukraine has previously enlisted dissident Russian groups who hate the Kremlin to launch similar — but smaller — hit-and-run raids, Tuesday’s incursion marks the first time the Ukrainian military has invaded in such significant numbers, ABC said.
Ukrainian officials, for their part, have neither talked about the attack nor confirmed Ukraine’s involvement in previous cross-border incursions.
Analysts have said the mini-offensive could be Ukraine’s way of relieving pressure on embattled areas like the Donbas region by forcing the Russians to redeploy troops to confront the threat.
Others have said it could be an attempt to preempt an expected Russian offensive into a neighboring region in Ukraine, or to snatch away Russian territory so it could later be used as a bargaining chip during peace negotiations, ABC said.
Some Russian military bloggers even claim that Ukraine could be shooting for the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, which is about 35 miles from the border.
But it’s unlikely the Ukrainians could manage that with such a limited force.
