SOURCES in Ukraine indicate that thousands of troops have been deployed to invade Russia’s Kursk province. Moscow and Kyiv are trading accusations over a fire at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant some 250 miles to the south.
A Ukrainian security official told Reuters the aim of the attack was to destabilise Russia and drive back Russian forces with a swift and measured attack.
It remains unclear how sustainable the operation will be in the medium term amid Kremlin threats that it will be wiped out using Russian reservists.
Russia said several hundred Ukrainian troops launched a rapid offensive on Tuesday, but Ukrainian officials said the number was much higher.
“The numbers are much higher, thousands,” when asked if more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers were involved, as reported by Al Jazeera, Monday (12/8).
Several Ukrainian brigades are said to be involved in the operation, according to multiple sources. Kyiv caught Russia off guard by attacking a weakly defended front-line sector that had not seen significant fighting since spring 2022.
Read also: NATO Secretary General Warns of Long War in Ukraine
“We are on the offensive. The goal is to expand the enemy’s positions, inflict maximum losses and destabilize the situation in Russia because it is unable to protect its own borders,” said the security official, who asked not to be named.
On Sunday (11/8) evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia had launched nearly 2,000 cross-border attacks on Ukraine’s Sumy region from the Kursk region this summer and such attacks deserved a response from Ukraine.
“Artillery, mortars, drones. We also note missile attacks, and every such attack deserves a fair response,” the Ukrainian leader said in his evening address.
Also read: Called a Strange Proposal, Ukraine Rejects Peace Proposal with Russia from Indonesia
Russian military bloggers say the fighting took place 20 km (12 miles) deep inside the Kursk area, prompting some to question why Ukraine was able to penetrate the area so easily.
Several dozen Russian soldiers, including fighters from Chechnya allegedly captured in Kursk, were featured in a video posted by “I want to live,” a project linked to Ukraine’s military spy agency, Reuters reported, although it could not verify the video.
Radiation
In a separate social media post, Zelenskiy said Russian forces appeared to have started a fire in one of the cooling towers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant it has occupied since the start of the war.
Read also: US: Russia Cannot Win War in Ukraine
“The radiation level is within normal limits,” Zelenskiy said before accusing Russia of using its control over the site, whose six reactors are in shutdown mode, to blackmail Ukraine, the rest of Europe and the world.
A Ukrainian official in Nikopol, the nearest city across the Dnipro river from the nuclear power plant, added that according to unofficial information, the fire was caused by the burning of a large number of car tires in a cooling tower.
Evgeny Balitsky, an official stationed by Russia in the occupied southern Ukraine, accused Kyiv forces of causing the fire by shelling the nearby town of Enerhodar, which, like the plant, was captured by Russia soon after the invasion in February 2022.
The IAEA said there had been no reported impact on nuclear safety at the site. Video and images showed smoke billowing dramatically from one of the towers, although experts say the towers are not used when the reactor is in shutdown mode, prompting some to question whether it was a ploy to try to raise the stakes of a Ukrainian attack on Russia.
On Sunday (11/8) evening, the state news agency Tass quoted Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom as saying the main fire had been extinguished, while Russian and Ukrainian authorities said one of the cooling towers appeared to have been damaged.
There has been speculation that Ukraine might try to seize Russia’s Kurchatov nuclear power plant near Kursk, but it is more than 30 miles from the current fighting and would be difficult for Kyiv’s forces to reach that far. Ukrainian leaders and their military have been tight-lipped about the purpose of such an attack.
It is widely believed to be intended to ease pressure on the eastern Donbas front where Russian forces are currently advancing. It is also seen as a demonstration to Russia and Ukraine’s Western backers that Kyiv is still capable of carrying out a successful offensive.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it had thwarted an attack by Ukrainian mobile groups on three villages north and east of Korenevo – Tolpino, Zhuravli, Obshchiy Kolodez. All are 15 to 18 miles from the border, the furthest point Moscow has acknowledged the attack has reached.
A pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel released a video of soldiers raising a flag over a building in the Russian village of Guevo, a few miles inside the border and seven miles south of Sudzha, one of the first towns reached during the offensive.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy finally acknowledged the attack on the Kursk region, the first time Kyiv’s regular forces have attacked Russian territory since the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“Today, I received several reports from Commander-in-Chief (Oleskandr) Syrskyi regarding the front line and our actions to push the war into the aggressor’s territory,” he said on Saturday evening.
“Ukraine has proven that it can restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure,” he continued.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused Kyiv of engaging in terrorist activities aimed at instilling fear in Russian society.
“They understand very well that this barbaric act is unreasonable from a military point of view, yet they continue to take advantage of the loans given by their employers,” he added.
Fifteen people were injured in Kursk, the regional acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said after missile debris hit an apartment building.
Zakharova said Ukrainian forces had launched a massive missile attack on the city and one of them had got through, causing casualties.
The Russian military appears to be relying on defending Kursk with a combination of conscripted border guards, elements from other regional forces, and those deployed from lower-priority frontline areas in Ukraine, according to analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
This, he said, is likely to exacerbate the disorganization of Russia’s chosen response. ISW said leadership of the effort to end the Ukrainian offensive may have been handed over to Russia’s FSB internal security agency after the Kremlin announced Friday that its response would be a counter-terrorism operation.
“Russian federal law places the military at the helm of counter-terrorism operations,” the think tank said.
Meanwhile, a nighttime missile strike near Kyiv killed a man and his four-year-old son, emergency services said. The explosions occurred Saturday night in central and eastern Kyiv after Ukraine’s air force said two Russian missiles were heading towards the city. (I-2)
#Ukraine #Deploys #Thousands #Troops #Attack #Russia
