A senior Russian commander said yesterday that Ukrainian forces had been pushed out of one village in Russia’s border region but that Kyiv’s forces were still probing along the front more than nine days since the lightning incursion into Russia.
The biggest foreign attack on sovereign Russian territory since World War Two unfurled on August 6 when thousands of Ukrainian troops smashed through Russia’s western border in an embarrassment for the Russian top military brass.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that his forces had advanced a few kilometers and that the goal of replenishing an ‘exchange fund’ of prisoners of war was being achieved. One Ukrainian official said Kyiv was carving out a buffer zone to protect its population against attack.
Major General Apti Alaudinov, who commands Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces who are fighting in Kursk, said that Russian forces had forced out Ukraine from Martynovka about 18 km (11 miles) from the border.
“We have burned everything that moves, everything that we have been able to find,” Alaudinov told Russian state television from Kursk region, reminding viewers of Russia’s defeat of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia.
Alaudinov, a close ally of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, said that Ukraine was sending in more forces into the Russian region but that the shift in resources was weakening Ukrainian forces at other parts of the front.
“The enemy is pushing, he is trying to get through from everywhere, push through,” Alaudinov said, admitting that initiative was still with Ukraine. “But every day the enemy’s forces are melting.”
The Russian town of Sudzha, a transhipment hub for Russian natural gas flowing to Europe via Ukraine, was not under full Ukrainian control, he said. Ukraine on Wednesday said it was fully under Ukrainian control.
Alaudinov also spoke of the chaotic battlefield situation in the region when his forces arrived shortly after the incursion, with forests teaming with Ukrainian forces and a lack of clarity on whose forces were where.
Ukraine’s incursion appeared aimed at forcing Moscow to slow its advance along the rest of the front inside Ukraine, though the Russian defence ministry also reported intense battles along the Ukraine front and said that its troops had taken better positions at several points.
Ukraine said there was no sign Russian military pressure was receding along the eastern front inside its borders yesterday and reported the heaviest fighting in weeks near Pokrovsk. Supported by swarms of drones, heavy artillery and tanks, Ukrainian units have since carved out a sliver of the world’s biggest nuclear power and battles were ongoing along a front about 18 km inside Russian territory yesterday.
