Ukrainian official says incursion into Russian territory aims to push Moscow to enter ‘fair negotiation process’.
Russia has said its forces have destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage group in its western region of Kursk, where Kyiv has launched a daring incursion into Russian territory.
The RIA Novosti state-run news agency state-run media agency reported on Friday that the Ukrainian troops were carrying weapons supplied by NATO countries.
“Samples of small arms manufactured by the United States and Sweden have been seized at the liquidation site of a Ukrainian sabotage group near the village of Kremyanoe in the Kursk region,” RIA reported a Russian security official said.
Russia’s state news agency TASS also quoted the country’s defence ministry as saying that Ukraine lost 220 soldiers and 19 armoured vehicles on Friday as Russian forces repelled Ukrainian advances in several areas of Kursk.
However, Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskii said Kyiv’s forces were advancing one to three kilometres in the Kursk region.
Kursk regional governor Alexei Smirnov said Ukraine had destroyed a road bridge over the Seym river in the region’s Glushkovsky district. Russian security officials told TASS that the attack could hinder a continuing evacuation of the frontier district’s roughly 20,000 inhabitants.
The Ukrainian military, which has been battling a Russian invasion since February 2022, launched the Kursk offensive earlier this month. The push has been described as the first incursion by a foreign army into Russia since the second world war.
On Thursday, Ukraine said it captured the Russian town of Sudzha, a strategic natural gas hub in the Kursk region.
Kyiv has stressed that it does not intend to hold on to Russian territory. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Ukraine had to force Russia to start talks on Kyiv’s terms.
“We need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia,” Podolyak wrote on Telegram. “In the Kursk region, we clearly see how the military tool is objectively used to convince the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process.”
Al Jazeera’s defence editor Alex Gatopoulos said the Kursk campaign has been an important “morale boost” for Ukraine.
He added that the incursion serves as a message to Russians that their government may not be telling the truth about the war efforts.
“Ordinary Russians are seeing Russian civilians under Ukrainian control, Ukrainian military units on Russian soil, which has been a real shock,” Gatopoulos said.
Nikolai Patrushev, an influential aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday that the West and NATO have helped plan Ukraine’s surprise attack, something Washington has denied.
“Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory,” Patrushev told the Izvestia newspaper.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 after a months-long standoff that saw Moscow demand an end to NATO expansion into former Soviet republics.
Ukrainian forces pushed back successfully against the initial Russian assault that appeared to be aimed at capturing Kyiv. Since then, the fighting has mostly taken place in the eastern regions of the country.
Russia had made slow advances in eastern Ukraine in recent months as the war appeared to turn into a protracted conflict. A Ukrainian counteroffensive last year failed to make significant changes on the battlefield.
On Friday, Russian state news agencies said at least two people have been killed and more injured when Ukrainian shelling hit a shopping centre in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
The US and its Western allies have provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Kyiv while imposing heavy sanctions against the Russian economy over the invasion.