Reporters from the Associated Press say that, on a trip through Kursk organised by the Ukrainian government, they witnessed a “trail of destruction”.
They report:
A trail of destruction lies in the path that Ukrainian forces carved on their risky incursion into Russia, blasting through the border and eventually into the town of Sudzha.
Artillery fire has blown chunks out of a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin that stands in a central square of the Russian town, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday was fully under his troops’ control. The windows of an administrative building are blasted out, and its bright yellow facade is scorched and pockmarked with bullet holes.
Ukrainian forces have overrun one Russian settlement after another in the surprise operation that Kyiv hopes will change the dynamic of the two-and-a-half-year-old conflict.
Russia’s military has so far struggled to mount an effective response to the attack on its Kursk region, the largest on the country since World War II. Sudzha, which is 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border, is the biggest town to fall to Ukraine’s troops since the incursion began Aug. 6.
Evidence of Ukraine’s lightning march lines the roads to the town. On grass littered with debris lies a sign blasted with bullets that has arrows in two directions: Ukraine to the left and Russia to right. A burned-out tank stands by the side of a road.
Ukraine’s extraordinary incursion into Kursk has changed the narrative of the war – but is a high-risk strategy
The immediate impact of Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian region of Kursk that began on 6 August has been a transformation in the morale of the Ukrainian public and even more so the narrative among Ukraine’s international partners.
The slow but inexorable loss of ground in Donbas that painted a grim picture of retreat has been replaced by images of a dynamic front. While deceptive, this new narrative is important in reminding Ukraine’s international partners that outcomes in war are not inevitable.
Politically, the purpose of the operation is to build leverage ahead of possible negotiations. If Donald Trump wins the US presidency in November, the threat of withdrawing military-technical assistance is likely to force Kyiv to negotiate. The Ukrainian government wants to make sure that if it has to enter that process, it has things that Russia wants to trade for concessions. The Ukrainian military, therefore, must take and hold a sizeable chunk of Russian land for the duration of potential negotiations.
Another important element of the offensive is that Ukraine succeeded in maintaining operational security before launching the assault. This has been a significant problem with past Ukrainian operations, and the competence in the preparation and planning demonstrates lessons being learned from last year’s offensive that will encourage partners about the prospects for future operations.
It helped that Russian military intelligence appears to have suffered once again from a chronic lack of curiosity or imagination as Ukrainian forces were withdrawn from the line in Donbas.
You can read the full piece here.
Germany, the second largest contributor of aid to war-torn Ukraine, plans to halve its bilateral military aid to Kyiv in 2025, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported.
Citing a parliamentary source AFP spoke to on Saturday, the news agency said the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz will instead bank on money generated by frozen Russian assets to continue supporting Kyiv, and is not planning any “additional aid” to the four billion euros ($4.4 billion) set aside in next year’s budget.
This year aid from Berlin amounted to eight billion euros ($8.8 billion).
To compensate, Germany is counting on “the creation, within the framework of the G7 and the European Union, of a financial instrument using frozen Russian assets”, said a separate source from inside the finance ministry.
The sources were confirming press reports, with the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung saying in its weekend edition that the move was part of an agreement between the chancellor of the centre-left Social Democratic party and the liberal finance minister Christian Lindner.
Ukraine’s allies have been working on a mechanism to allow part of the $300 billion of Russian assets frozen worldwide to be used to support Kyiv in its war with Moscow.
When video footage of the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region began appearing on social media, a joke started doing the rounds with Vladimir Putin asking Stalin what he should do about the German tanks rolling towards Kursk. Stalin’s ghost responds that the recipe for victory is simple: send the best Ukrainian divisions into battle, like he did in 1943, and then ask the Americans for tanks and money. But neither of these options is available to Putin. He is now facing the Ukrainian army on his own soil, and regards the US as his primary enemy.
Every year since the Russian invasion, Ukraine has surprised the world. First, at the very start of the war in 2022, its forces repelled a Russian assault on the capital, Kyiv. Then, in 2023, they liberated Kherson. Now, their tanks are rolling in to Russian territory. Ukrainian armed forces have been advancing for the past 10 days. They already control about 1,000 sq km of land and more than 80 settlements. Russian flags have been taken down; in the city of Sudzha, a military administration has been set up to govern the territory, and hundreds of prisoners of war have been captured.
Kyiv’s territorial gains, in contrast to the size of Russia’s territory, are, of course, small. The Ukrainian army has taken the equivalent of about 10% of Greater London. The Kursk incursionmay not be a decisive battle in this war, but it radically changes the prevailing narrative about how it is being fought and how it might end. It strikes at the root of the Kremlin’s strategy, which has been to have the west “freely reason to a conclusion that Russia’s prevailing in Ukraine is inevitable and that we must stay on the sidelines”, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
You can read the full article here.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his forces were “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv has been mounting a major ground offensive.
Ukrainian army chief Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi “reported on the strengthening of the positions of our forces in the Kursk region and the expansion of stabilised territory”, Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram on Saturday, Agence France-Presse reports.
“As of this morning, we have replenished the exchange fund for our country,” Zelenskiy said, referring to Russian soldiers Ukraine has captured to be used in future prisoner swaps.
He added:
I thank all the soldiers and commanders who are taking Russian soldiers prisoner and thus bringing the release of our soldiers and civilians held by Russia closer.
Zelenskiy said the situation on the eastern front near the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk was “under control”, after Russia reported it had made a string of advances towards them in recent weeks.
“(There were) dozens of Russian assaults on our positions over the last day,” Zelenskiy said. “But our soldiers and units are doing everything to destroy the occupier and repel the attacks.”
Russia’s defence ministry has accused Ukraine of planning to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant and blame such a “provocation” on Moscow, Reuters has reported, citing Interfax news agency.
The ministry said that Russia would respond harshly in the event of such an attack, which it said would contaminate a large surrounding area.
The Kursk nuclear power plant remains under Russia’s control.
Kyiv denied Russia’s claims, calling them “insane” propaganda.
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi posted on X:
We are seeing another surge in insane Russian propaganda about alleged Ukrainian plans to use ‘dirty bombs’ or attack nuclear plants. We officially refute these false claims.
Ukraine has no intention or ability to take any such actions.
As tens of thousands flee their homes in border region, many say government downplayed threat of invasion
A report by Nataliya Vasilyeva for The Observer
Lyubov Antipova last spoke to her elderly parents almost two weeks ago, when she first heard rumours of a Ukrainian incursion and begged them to leave their village in Russia’s Kursk region.
The threat seemed unreal – Russian soil had not seen invading forces since the end of the second world war – and Russian state media initially dismissed the invasion as a one-off “attempt at infiltration”, so Antipova’s parents, who keep chickens and a pig on a small plot, decided to stay in Zaoleshenka.
Next day, Antipova saw photos online of Ukrainian soldiers posing next to a supermarket and the office of a gas company. She recognised the place immediately: her parents live about 50 metres away.
“All those years my parents didn’t think they would be affected,” Antipova told the Observer by phone from Kursk, carefully avoiding using the word “war”, which has been officially outlawed in Russia. “We were sure the Russian army would protect us. I’m amazed how quickly the Ukrainian forces advanced.”
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has laid bare the apparent complacency of Russian officials in charge of the border. Many local people accuse the government of downplaying the Ukrainian attack or misinforming them of the danger.
Read the full report here:
Russia is restricting access to information in a bid to limit criticism of its invasion of Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.
In a post on X, the MoD said Russian authorities are “deliberately slowing” traffic on WhatsApp and YouTube and that the latter could be “blocked altogether in autumn 2024”.
Russian state control over information “is increasing”, the MoD post added.
Here are some of the latest images coming to us over the wires.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has derailed plans to hold indirect talks in Qatar on halting strikes on energy infrastructure, the Washington Post has reported, citing undisclosed official sources.
According to the report:
Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Doha this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides, diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions said, in what would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and offered a reprieve for both countries.
But the indirect talks, with the Qataris serving as mediators and meeting separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week, according to the officials.
The report added that a diplomat said Russia “didn’t call off the talks, they said give us time.”
Ukraine had wanted to send its delegation to Doha anyway, the person added however, Qatar declined as it did not see a one-sided meeting as beneficial.
The Russian management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant said on Saturday a Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive charge on a road outside the plant, endangering its staff who use the road, the TASS news agency reported.
Russia has been in control of the Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, since soon after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of trying to sabotage its operations.