Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military invasion of Russia’s Kursk region was aimed at creating a buffer zone to prevent further attacks from Moscow across the border.
This is the first time that the Ukrainian president has clearly stated the aim of the operation launched on August 6. He had previously indicated that its aim was to protect communities in the neighboring Sumy region from constant shelling.
In his evening address on Sunday, Zelensky said: “Our main task in the overall defense operations now is to destroy as much of Russia’s war potential as possible and to carry out maximum counteroffensives. This includes the creation of a buffer zone on the territory of the aggressor – our operation in the Kursk region.”
Kiev had previously said little about the targets of its advance of tanks and other armored vehicles into Russia, the largest attack on the country since World War II, which took the Kremlin by surprise and resulted in dozens of villages and hundreds of prisoners falling into Ukrainian hands.
The Ukrainians penetrated deep into the region from several directions, encountering little resistance and spreading chaos and panic as tens of thousands of civilians fled.
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed last week that his troops had advanced more than 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of the region, but it has not been independently verified how much territory Ukrainian forces actually control.
In his comments on the creation of a buffer zone, Zelensky said the Ukrainian armed forces had “achieved good and much-needed results”.
The Institute for the Study of War has “monitored claims” that the Ukrainian operation in Kursk advanced 800 square kilometers in the first six days. The incursion “attacked largely unprepared, unarmed and unmanned Russian defenses along the border,” the US think tank said in its daily report on the conflict. Ukraine continued to make rapid advances in Kursk “after deploying Russian reinforcements to the area,” it added.
On Sunday, Ukraine said it had hit a second key bridge in the Kursk region in an attempt to cut Moscow’s supply routes. “Another bridge is missing,” Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram, posting aerial video of an explosion that destroyed a bridge near the Russian town of Swannoye.
“The Air Force continues to deprive the enemy of its logistical capabilities through precise air strikes,” he said.
On Friday, Ukraine announced that it had destroyed another bridge in the neighboring town of Glushkovo.
According to Oleksii Drozdenko, the head of the military administration in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, Ukraine has also captured more than 150 Russian prisoners of war on some days during the military operation in Kursk. “Sometimes there are more than 100 or 150 prisoners of war per day,” he said. Many of the Russian soldiers guarding the border are young conscripts. “They don’t want to fight us,” he said.
Russia denied a report that Ukraine’s attack on Kursk had derailed indirect talks with Kyiv on halting attacks on energy and power infrastructure, saying on Sunday that no talks had taken place. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Ukraine and Russia planned to send delegations to Qatar this month to negotiate a landmark agreement to halt attacks on energy and power infrastructure of both warring sides. The Post said the agreement would have amounted to a partial ceasefire, but the talks had been derailed by Ukraine’s attack on Russian territory.
In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a visit to China that Moscow’s offensive this month in the northeastern Kharkiv region was aimed at creating a buffer zone.
This offensive opened a new front and displaced thousands of Ukrainians. The attacks were a response to Ukrainian shelling of the Russian region of Belgorod, Putin said. “I have publicly stated that if things continue like this, we will be forced to create a security zone, a sanitary zone,” he said. “We are doing that.”
With Associated Press
