The governor of Russia’s border area of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, declared a regionwide state of emergency on Wednesday. Ukraine’s military has been hitting back across the border after a stalled push by Russian forces into the Kharkiv region. “The situation in the Belgorod region continues to be extremely difficult and tense,” Gladkov said, adding that he was appealing to Vladimir Putin’s government to declare a federal emergency situation.
Ukraine launched more than 35 drones on Russia’s Voronezh region on Tuesday night, said Alexander Gusev, governor of the region which is several hundred kilometres south of Moscow.
It comes after Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, which the US president, Joe Biden, addressed for the first time on Tuesday. “It’s creating a real dilemma for Putin, and we’ve been in direct contact, constant contact, with the Ukrainians. That’s all I’m going to say about it while it’s active.” Answering questions from reporters in New Orleans, Biden said he had been briefed every four to five hours for the last six to eight days on Ukraine’s action.
The goal of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion appears to be to force Russia to pull troops out of Ukraine to defend Russian territory against the Ukrainian cross-border assault, a US official said on Tuesday, quoted by the Reuters news agency. A week after Ukrainian forces launched their surprise attack, Russian authorities are scrambling to bring the situation in Kursk under control, Shaun Walker writes. The Biden administration has insisted it had no advance knowledge and no involvement in the operation.
In an explainer using maps, footage and photos, Peter Beaumont writes that Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed on Monday that Ukraine controlled about 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of the Kursk region. The claim was largely confirmed on the Russian side. Alexei Smirnov, acting governor of the Kursk region, told the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, via a videoconference on Monday that Ukrainian forces controlled 28 Russian settlements including towns and villages up to 18 miles (30km) inside Russia.
