kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that his country’s troops have taken full control of Sudzha, the largest Russian city to fall to Ukrainian forces since they began their incursion into Russian territory more than a week ago.
Although it had only about 5,000 inhabitants before the war, Sudzha is the administrative center of the border area of Russia’s Kursk region and is larger than any of the other towns or settlements Ukraine claims to have taken since the incursion began on August 6.
Zelensky said Ukraine would establish a military command office in Sudzha, indicating that Ukraine might plan to remain in the Kursk region for the long term, or simply signal to Moscow that it may intend to do so. He did not elaborate on what functions the office would perform, though he said earlier this week that Ukraine would distribute humanitarian aid to Sudzha residents.
Russia has not yet responded to Zelensky’s claims, but its Defense Ministry said yesterday that Russian forces had blocked Ukrainian attempts to seize other communities.
The surprise Ukrainian incursion has already reshaped the war and sowed chaos in the Kursk region, leading to the displacement of more than 120,000 civilians, according to Russian authorities, and the capture of at least 100 Russian soldiers, according to kyiv.
Zelensky has said one of the reasons for the raid was to protect neighbouring Ukrainian regions.
“The more the Russian military presence in the border regions is destroyed, the closer peace and real security will be for our state. The Russian state must be held accountable for what it has done,” he said on Tuesday.
Russia has suffered previous incursions into its territory during the war, but the one in Kursk stands out for its size, speed, the alleged participation of Ukrainian brigades with previous battlefield experience and the length of time they have remained inside Russia.
According to Western military analysts, up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers took part in the raid.
The incursion also marks the first time foreign troops have invaded and held Russian territory under their control since Nazi Germany did so in World War II.
Although Russian military bloggers reported that Russian reservists sent to the Kursk region had halted the advance of Ukrainian troops, questions remain about whether the incursion would force Moscow to move troops to Kursk from front-line positions in eastern Ukraine, where they have made slow but steady advances this year.
As kyiv trumpeted its advances in Kursk yesterday, authorities in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which had a pre-war population of about 60,000, warned civilians to evacuate as Russian troops were rapidly approaching, some 10 kilometres from the outskirts of the city.
If Russian troops capture Pokrovsk, where they have been trying to break through Ukrainian defenses for weeks, they would move even closer to their goal of capturing the entire Donetsk region of Ukraine.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said yesterday that Russia had withdrawn some forces, including infantry units, from Ukraine and was moving them to Kursk, but that the United States did not know how many troops that was.
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2024-08-27 07:47:52
