Following reports that Ukrainian troops are engaged in fierce combat on Russian territory, Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called it a “large-scale provocation.”
According to his statement at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Putin said that “the Kyiv regime is conducting indiscriminate shooting from various types of weapons, including missiles, at civilian buildings, residential houses and ambulances.”
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine over two years ago, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Exiled Russian units allied with Kyiv have launched cross-border attacks into Russia in the past, but this week’s reported incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is one of the largest. It is also the first that has apparently involved regular Ukrainian forces — and has sparked the greatest alarm in the Kremlin.
It’s a big blow to Putin’s prestige, as he has tried to shield the Russian public from the consequences of the war he launched.
“Following my conversation with the acting governor of the Kursk region, instructions have been given to several civilian agencies to provide the necessary assistance to the region’s residents. I also ask the government to take up this matter immediately,” Putin said at the briefing.
The first reports of a Ukrainian ground attack came on Tuesday from the acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, who wrote on Telegram about “attempted border breakthroughs” in the Sudzhansky and Korenevsky districts, and later claimed that Ukrainians had attacked Russian border forces units at the settlements of Nikolayevo-Daryino and Oleshnya.
Smirnov also said that several thousand civilians had been evacuated from the fighting; Russian authorities said five civilians had been killed and 24 injured.
On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry also announced that fighting between Russian forces and Ukrainian troops was continuing in the areas of the Kursk region directly adjacent to the Russian-Ukrainian border.
The chief of the Russian army’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, told Putin on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces would be pushed back to the border, according to the Izvestia newspaper. He said that 1,000 Ukrainian troops were involved in the attack, and that 100 had been killed and 215 injured.
“Ukrainian forces are doomed,” said Major General Apty Alaudinov, a deputy chief of the main military-political directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, according to the official TASS news agency.
Several news outlets also reported on the battles, but Kyiv has not yet commented on events inside Russia’s borders.
In recent weeks, Russian forces have been making slow but steady gains against Ukraine on the eastern front, and are also engaged in an offensive in the direction of Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv. Many of the supply lines feeding that offensive run near the area where Ukrainian troops are apparently fighting inside Russia.
Moscow may also be forced to redirect soldiers from other fronts to defend Russia proper.
Ukraine’s allies, led by the United States, have been very wary of Ukraine using donated weapons to hit targets inside Russia. However, Kyiv wants to disrupt Russian bases and logistics inside Russia.
“Russia, by the way, has always believed that it can use its border regions with impunity for massive air and artillery attacks on the sovereign territories of other countries,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on X.