Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that his forces were accelerating their advances along the front with Ukraine, a week after Ukrainian forces invaded Russian territory. Putin said 28 Russian towns were under Ukrainian control.
"The main task, of course, is for the defense ministry to squeeze out, to knock out the enemy from our territories," Putin said adding that Kyiv aimed to improve its negotiating position ahead of possible peace talks and at slowing the advance of Russian forces.
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Vladimir Putin, Ukraine forces in Kursk
(Photo: Dmitry Serebryakov/ AP, Gavrill Grigoriv / EPA)
Ukrainian forces rammed through the Russian border last Tuesday and swept across some western parts of Russia's Kursk region, a surprise attack that laid bare the weakness of Russian border defenses in the area.
He questioned what negotiations there could be with an enemy he accused of firing indiscriminately at Russian civilians and nuclear facilities. "The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response," he said. He also said he expected further Ukrainian attempts to destabilize Russia's Western border.
Russian officials say Ukraine was trying to show its Western backers that it can still muster major military operations just as pressure mounts on both Kyiv and Moscow to agree to talk about halting the war.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in what it termed a special military operation and now controls 18% of Ukrainian territory. Until the surprise attack on Russia, Ukraine had been losing territory to Russian forces despite hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. and European support aimed at stopping and even reversing the Russian advance.
Ukraine has just managed to carve out a comparable amount of territory. The acting governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, said Ukraine controlled 28 settlements in the region, and the incursion was about 12 km deep and 40 km wide.
One Russian source with knowledge of official thinking said that by attacking Russia, Ukraine was emboldening hardliners who were arguing that any ceasefire talks were a waste of time and that Russia should push much further into Ukraine.
The advance of Ukrainian forces delivered a blow to Putin's efforts to pretend that life in Russia has largely remained unaffected by the war. State propaganda has tried to play down the attack, emphasizing the authorities' efforts to help residents of the region and seeking to distract attention from the military's failure to prepare for the attack and quickly repel it.
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Russian residents of Kursk view damage caused in Ukraine attack
(Photo: Anatoliy Zhdanov / Reuters )
Kursk residents recorded videos lamenting they had to flee the border area, leaving behind their belongings, and pleading with Putin for help. But Russia's state-controlled media kept a tight lid on any expression of discontent.
Retired Gen. Andrei Gurulev, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, criticized the military for failing to properly protect the border. "Regrettably, the group of forces protecting the border didn't have its own intelligence assets," he said on his messaging app channel. "No one likes to see the truth in reports, everybody just wants to hear that all is good."
Russian bloggers have questioned why Ukraine was able to pierce the Kursk region so easily, and why it took so long to stabilize the situation.