Ukraine justifies Kursk attack in first admission of incursion into Russia

Ukraine has admitted that its forces attacked Russia’s Kursk region, blaming Moscow for Kiev’s incursion into the Russian territory.

Kiev had not officially taken responsibility for the operation, but on Thursday an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow was to blame for the incursion. 

"The root cause of any escalation, shelling, military actions, forced evacuations and destruction of normal life forms, including within the Russian federation's own territories like Kursk and Belgorod regions, is solely Russia’s unequivocal aggression," presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said.

“War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes,” he added. 

Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of the Kursk region, said the Kiev forces had carried out "breakthrough attempts" in the Sudzha and Korenevo districts during the ongoing incursion, now into its third day.

Russian military bloggers reported that fighting was taking place on the highway east of Korenevo, 20 km north of the border, while the western part of Sudzha, about 9 km into Russia, appeared to be under Ukrainian control.

The Kremlin has declared a state of emergency in Kursk. Local officials told the TASS news agency that 3,000 civilians had been evacuated following the surprise attack by around 1,000 Kiev forces who burst across the border on the morning of Tuesday.

Previous incursions from Ukraine into Russia, near the city of Belgorod, had been led by anti-Kremlin Russian groups.

Russian officials said at least five civilians were killed and many more injured in the Ukrainian forces' latest artillery attacks on residential areas inside Russia.

Military experts and diplomatic analysts undermined the value of such incursions, describing them as a "semblance of activity" amid continuous military failures on the frontlines.

"With their barbaric attack in the Kursk region, Ukrainian banderites tried to sow panic among residents of the region and demonstrate at least some semblance of activity amid constant failures of the Ukrainian forces in the conflict area. Expectations by neo-Nazis failed to come true there as well," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. 

"Shelling by Ukrainian militants left 24 civilians in the Kursk region, including six children, injured. A drone strike on an ambulance killed a paramedic and the driver," she added. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin described the incursion as a "large-scale provocation" by the US-led Ukrainians.

Since February 2022, the West has flooded Ukraine with Western weapons and ammunition to strengthen Kiev forces against Russian troops.

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