Residents in Russia’s besieged Kursk oblast have published an appeal for help from the country’s leader, Vladimir Putin, saying the fighting there is far more intense than military leaders are letting on.
More than two dozen people from the Sudzhansky district gathered in a video published on Thursday, saying Putin had been undersold on how dire the situation is for local civilians as Ukrainian troops force their way past the border.
“These lies enable the local residents to die. The Chief of the General staff recently told you that the situation is under control,” one of the residents said in the video, according to a translation from CNN.
“But today, huge furious battles are underway in the Sudzhansky and Korenevsky districts,” she said.
The clip was disseminated on the Russian Telegram channel Native Sudzha, which covers news in the region.
The residents said they’ve been rendered homeless by Ukraine’s attack and said they had to rely on news from Telegram channels instead of local officials.
Many said they were unable to bring their travel or identification documents with them because of how quickly they had to evacuate, and said authorities should have known Ukraine was building its forces on the border.
“We are left alone with children without a place to go, without compensation, without any money. We escaped with only clothes on our backs,” said one woman, according to CNN’s translation.
One man addressed Putin directly, claiming that people from Guevo, a town in Sudzha, had not been evacuated by officials and were left stranded amid the fighting.
Guevo is reported by open-source intelligence to be one of over a dozen Russian villages now under Ukrainian control.
Russia’s Defense Ministry and the press team for Putin’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Ukrainian troops push into Kursk
Kyiv’s forces launched an incursion into Kursk on Wednesday, with some Ukrainian armored vehicles spotted fighting up to nine miles deep into Russian territory.
Russia has said Ukraine launched the attack with some 1,000 troops and about 40 armored vehicles, including tanks. The Kremlin called the assault a “large-scale provocation.”
About 80 miles to the southeast, Russia opened a similar operation in May by moving its troops into the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, opening a new war front.
Ukraine has said little about its attack on Russia, though an advisor to the president’s office, Mykhailo Podolyak, acknowledged the Ukrainian push in social media statements on Thursday.
“Now, a significant part of the global community considers Rf a legitimate target for any operations and types of weapons,” Podolyak wrote on X, referring to the Russian armed forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his Thursday address that Russia “should feel what it has done” to Ukraine, but did not mention the incursion directly.
In a Wednesday meeting convened by Putin, Russian military chief Valery Gerasimov reported that the Ukrainian advance had been brought to a halt, claiming that Kyiv’s forces had taken heavy casualties.
The situation is “under control,” Kursk’s acting governor, Alexey Smirnov, said in a statement on Telegram. He urged residents not to panic.
But Russian sources and footage of skirmishes in Kursk show the fighting is still fierce.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, geolocated Ukrainian units having broken past Russian defensive lines in at least two areas.
“The sky is completely dominated by Ukrainian drones,” wrote military blogger VChK-OPGU, who is known to have ties to Russia’s military forces, on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Putin has announced a one-time payment of 10,000 rubles, or $115, in relief for Kursk residents affected by the attack, according to state media.
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