Russian authorities have been evacuating thousands of civilians from the Kursk region as Ukrainian forces advance after a surprise incursion aimed at compelling Moscow to slow its progress along the rest of the front lines.
Kursk’s acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said the Glushkovo district, which has a population of 20,000 and is 20km (12 miles) from the front, was being evacuated on Thursday.
At least 200,000 people have so far been moved from the border regions, according to Russian officials.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Thursday that its forces had shot down Ukrainian drones over the neighbouring Belgorod region and Sukhoi-34 bombers had pummelled Ukrainian positions in Kursk.
The ministry also said its troops had taken better positions at several points to fight against what Ukraine described as carving out a buffer zone to protect its population against attacks.
Ukraine’s air forces said they shot down all 29 drones Russia launched overnight as the Russian military announced the deployment of fighter jets to the western border.
Natia Seskuria, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera that Ukraine’s political aim is to demonstrate to its Western allies that Ukraine “still has the strength to fight for its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
“Ukrainians have been quite clear in identifying and highlighting that this is not an incursion aiming to occupy Russian territories but rather self-defensive measures,” Seskuria said.
Reporting from Lviv in western Ukraine, Al Jazeera’s Alex Gatopoulos said the presence of Ukrainian forces in Kursk has made Russian President Vladimir Putin look weak as some Russians call the incursion an intelligence failure and question security.
Putin has ordered huge financial incentives for any conscripts joining the army, such as “bonuses, initial large payments, preferential mortgages. The real drive is to boost conscription and get troops [to Kursk] as quickly as possible,” Gatopoulos said, adding that Ukraine’s task to manage the territory they’ve taken could prove to be a major headache for the army down the line.
Ukraine’s military spokesman Dmytro Lykhoviy said Russia has moved some troops from Ukraine’s occupied south to other areas but it has not constituted a big redeployment for now.
“No significant changes in the size of the group were detected, and the number of the personnel is not changing enough to indicate any differences or weakening in … hostilities,” Lykhoviy said on national television.
Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has been slowly advancing for most of the year along the 1,000km (620-mile) front in Ukraine and controls 18 percent of Ukraine. The Ukrainian incursion into Russia has yielded its biggest battlefield gains since 2022.
