Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine says incursion into Russia creates buffer zone

Ukraine’s forces have advanced further into Russia’s Kursk region as officials in Kyiv said the territory would serve as a buffer zone to protect its border areas from Russian attacks.

The Ukrainian surge last week caught Russia by surprise and has, for now at least, changed the mood of a war in which Russian forces that began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had been grinding out steady gains all year.

“We continue to advance further in the Kursk region,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram, “from 1 to 2km in various areas since the start of the day. And more than 100 Russian prisoners of war in the same period.”

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the creation of a “buffer zone” was “designed to protect our border communities from daily enemy attacks”.

Russia has been pummelling Ukraine with strikes launched from adjacent border territories, including from the Kursk region.

Ukraine complains of being hamstrung in defending itself against such attacks by the need to respect other countries’ compunction about using their weapons against Russia’s hinterland rather than against its forces in occupied Ukraine.

Carving out a slice of the Kursk region - which Russia puts at less than half the area claimed by Ukraine - will help that cause.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to push out the Ukrainian troops, which he says are aiming, with foreign backing, to give Ukraine a stronger hand in possible future ceasefire talks.

But more than a week of intense battles have so far failed to oust them.

“The situation remains difficult,” said Yuri Podolyaka, an influential Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger.

“The enemy still has the initiative and so, albeit slowly, it is increasing its presence in the Kursk region.”

Russia said 117 Ukrainian drones had been shot down over its territory overnight, mostly in the Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod, and Nizhny Novgorod regions.

It said missiles had been downed, and showed Sukhoi Su-34 bombers striking what it said were Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region.

Later, the Defence Ministry said Russian forces had repelled a series of Ukrainian attacks inside the Kursk region, including at Russkoye Porechnoye, 18km from the border, and some pro-Russian war bloggers said the front had been stabilised.

State television said Russian forces were turning the tide, showing footage of attacks on Ukrainian positions and relocations of Russian civilians.

Some of the Ukrainian drones attacked four Russian military airfields in an attempt to undermine Russia’s ability to attack Ukraine with glide bombs, a Ukrainian security source told Reuters.

The Ukrainian incursion into Russia.

Ukraine’s military also said it had destroyed a Russian Su-34.

Russia’s National Guard said it was beefing up security at the Kursk nuclear power plant, located 35km from the fighting.

And in the Russian border region of Belgorod, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov declared a state of emergency.

Russia says it has already relocated about 200,000 people from the border zone.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian forces would open humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to leave, “both in the direction of Russia and in the direction of Ukraine”.