Ukraine carried out one of its boldest and riskiest moves of this war last week by launching a new offensive that saw its forces invade Russia, stunning Moscow, Kyiv’s international partners, and general observers of the conflict.
The Kremlin has been scrambling to respond to the shocking Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region, which is now on its 10th day and marks the largest attack by a foreign enemy on Russian soil since World War II.
Kyiv claimed earlier this week that its forces had captured around 1,000 square kilometers (roughly 386 square miles) of Russian territory — almost as much as Moscow has seized in Ukraine this year — and more than 80 settlements within that area since the assault began on August 6.
While the overall goal of the incursion remains somewhat unclear, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested the operation may contribute to future negotiations.
“Our advance in the Kursk region is going well today — we are reaching our strategic goal,” he said Wednesday in his nightly address to the nation. “The ‘exchange fund’ for our state has also been significantly replenished.”
These advances have been documented by the Institute for the Study of War think tank, which has published daily maps depicting territory thought to have been taken by the Ukrainians. The creation of these maps relies on uncontradicted Russian sources and other available information on the Ukrainian invasion.
While these maps chart Ukraine’s advances, at least as well as can be understood in the current fog of war, it is unclear exactly how much territory the military actively holds.
Still, the rapid advances over the past 10 days have undoubtedly been significant — harkening back to its fall 2022 counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region — but the tempo of operations appears to have slowed as Kyiv faces increasing Russian resistance.
According to the Biden administration, the ongoing Ukrainian operation has prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to “make adjustments” to its force deployment.
John Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesperson, said that Russia has redirected some units from operations in and around Ukraine to the Kursk region, although it’s unclear how many forces have been moved and how many more could still go.
“We see signs that they are trying to reinforce themselves in and around the Kursk area as a result of Ukrainian operations there,” Kirby explained to reporters on Thursday. “Doing that means you’re taking assets that were in one place doing one thing, and now they have to go do another.”
He added that this “certainly presents a dilemma in the decision-making process.”
The intense fighting in the Kursk region has forced more than 130,000 civilians to flee the area, and Ukraine said its forces have also taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war during the operation.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces captured the town of Sudzha and are setting up a military commandant’s office there, Zelenskyy said Thursday, citing a new report from Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Sudzha, which is adjacent to a key gas terminal, is the largest town in Russia that the invading Ukrainian forces appear to have captured so far.
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