Moscow is reportedly pulling some military forces out of Ukraine amid Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russia, the biggest foreign military offensive on Russian soil since World War II.
U.S. officials confirmed the withdrawal to The Wall Street Journal, though it’s not clear how many Russian troops were involved. Ukraine has also sent tanks and armored vehicles to support its own troops who stormed across the border last week into Russia’s Kursk region.
Putin ordered his military to quickly expel the Ukrainian forces who crossed into Russian territory on August 6, but Kyiv claims its troops are continuing to make advances. Ukraine’s fighters have already driven at least 20 miles into Russia with Ukraine’s top military commander bragging that 74 Russian towns and villages had been captured.
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“We are advancing in the Kursk region, one to two kilometers in various areas since the beginning of the day,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in an X post Wednesday. “We have captured more than 100 Russian servicemen during this period. I am grateful to everyone involved; this will accelerate the return of our guys and girls home.”
Putin has called the operation a major provocation. On Monday, he claimed Ukraine launched the assault “with the help of its Western masters” as a ploy to strengthen its negotiating position before potential peace talks, according to Reuters. The White House has denied receiving advanced warning of the attack last week and was not involved in the offensive.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tykhi told reporters Tuesday the point of the incursion is not to occupy Russian land. “The purpose of the operation is to save the lives of our people and protect the territory of Ukraine from Russian attacks,” he said, adding that the sooner Moscow agrees to “restore a just peace,” the sooner the Ukrainian raids will end.
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is now facing a crisis of its own in its border regions. Almost 200,000 people have fled their homes in areas of the Kursk region, while authorities in the neighboring Belgorod region declared a state of emergency on Wednesday.
“The situation in our Belgorod region remains extremely difficult and tense due to shelling from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Houses are destroyed, civilians died and were injured,” Vyacheslav Gladkov, the Belgorod regional governor, said on Telegram.
Russia said it had also shot down 117 Ukrainian drones overnight, largely in the Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod, and Nizhny Novgorod regions. It said missiles had also been intercepted.
In his statement Wednesday, Zelensky said that Kyiv is “not forgetting our eastern front for a second” and had instructed the commander-in-chief to bolster the line with more equipment and supplies.
