The acting governor of the Russian border city of Kursk, where Ukrainian forces began their incursion last week, told Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on Monday that he planned to evacuate 121,000 people from their homes and move another 59,000 out of danger areas as quickly as possible.
Reports began to surface on August 6 that Ukrainian forces had crossed the border and occupied territory in Kursk, a place Ukrainian authorities have long viewed as a springboard for attacks on their own territory. The attack marks the first time Ukraine has pushed Russian troops back into Russian territory and occupied Russian territory since Putin launched a “special operation” to oust President Volodymyr Zelensky in February 2022. It also represents Ukraine’s biggest threat to Russia. first time Since World War II, Russia has lost territory to foreign invaders.
The operation came after President Zelensky issued a bizarre declaration in January that Kursk and five other Russian territories were “historically” Ukrainian territory.
Putin has colonized five Ukrainian regions that he claims are rightfully Russian: Crimea in 2014, and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in 2022.
Governor Alexei Smirnov made the shocking revelation about the scale of the evacuation operation in Kursk during a meeting with Putin on Monday night that was also attended by the governors of the two other border provinces of Belgorod and Bryansk.
“Currently the enemy controls 28 communities. They have penetrated 12 kilometers deep into the territory of the Kursk region and have established a 40-kilometer-wide front line,” Smirnov said during the meeting. According to Putin, listening to a Kremlin translation of Smirnov’s remarks, interrupted him, urging the military leaders to debate the occupied territory and instead focus on the humanitarian situation in Smirnov’s region.
Smirnov said the evacuation operation “affects 180,000 people.”
Officials from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations assist arriving people who were forcibly evicted from border settlements from the Kursk region, at a train station in Oryol, Russia, on August 9, 2024. Authorities have arranged temporary accommodation, food, medical care and information support for more than 80 people, 24 of whom are children. (Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“As of today, 121,000 people have been evacuated and evacuation efforts for the remaining 59,000 are ongoing,” the governor said.
Smirnoff added that he believes the major security challenge regarding the evacuation operation is petty crime.
“The problem we are facing right now is that communities and neighborhood centers are devastated. Of course, military forces are now involved and not everyone has left,” he pointed out. “The evacuation order was not mandatory, so shops are still open. We have had to ban the sale of alcohol and we are closely monitoring the situation to prevent looting.”
The governor also acknowledged that the situation on the military’s front lines was “fairly unclear” and that “we are sometimes struggling to deploy combat troops.”
Putin used the opportunity of the meeting to address the Russian people, describing the situation on the border as designed to turn Russians against his government.
‘Nobody cared about us’: Russians blame Moscow for Ukrainian counterattack https://t.co/C6I89Itxls
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 9, 2024
“It appears that our enemies are trying to strengthen their negotiating position for the future,” Putin said. “Another of their clear goals is to create discord and divisions in our society, to instil fear and to weaken the unity and solidarity of the Russian people. They aim to destabilize the domestic political situation.”
Putin warned that the incursion into Kursk could spread to other border areas, particularly Bryansk Oblast, whose governor said he was not evacuating anyone at the moment.
In Belgorod, where reports on Monday said authorities had begun plans to evacuate up to 11,000 people, local officials told Putin that “overall, there has been a sharp increase in the number of destroyed and damaged homes in 2024.”
“Over the last two and a half years, more than 30,000 houses and apartments have been damaged, and we have now restored 25,000,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov told Putin. “Unfortunately, the situation along the border does not allow us to work efficiently. The most difficult situation is in Shebekino, where 38,000 people live in the city and 85,000 in the surrounding area.”
The Ukrainian government has largely avoided publicly discussing the Kursk massacre over the past week, with President Zelensky himself making vague comments on Thursday saying Russia “should know what it has done to our country.” That all changed on Monday night, when Zelensky mentioned the Kursk massacre in his evening address to the nation.
President Zelensky called Kursk “the disaster of his war.”
Russia withdraws from second border area after reports of Ukrainian troops entrenchinghttps://t.co/ljAagzftIs
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 12, 2024
“This always happens to those who despise people and rules. Russia brought war to other countries and now it is bringing war to itself. [to Russia]” he declared, state media reported. Ukrinform.
President Zelenskyy assured affected populations inside Russia that Russia has no intention of annexing Russian territory as it did with Ukraine, but rather is targeting areas in Russia that can be used to launch long-range attacks into Russia itself.
“These are, in particular, the areas from which the Russian military launched attacks on our Sumy region. Today and since June 1, there have been nearly 2,100 shellings on the territory of the Sumy region,” President Zelenskyy said. “Therefore, our operation is a purely Ukrainian security issue and the liberation of the border areas from Russian troops.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry also addressed the situation on Tuesday, suggesting the invasion was necessary because Western countries, particularly the United States, are preventing Ukraine from using long-range missiles to target Russian civilian areas.
“Unfortunately, Ukraine does not have sufficient capabilities to carry out long-range strikes with available weapons to defend itself against this terrorism. There is no adequate solution, as we advocate, yet,” spokesman Heorhyy Tyhy said. said“Therefore, we need to liberate these border areas from Russian forces that attack Ukraine or use them as a cover for terrorism against Ukrainians. We will continue to do this in any way that we deem necessary to ensure security and protect Ukraine.”
“The sooner Russia agrees to the restoration of a just peace, in particular based on this peace formula, the sooner the attacks by the Ukrainian Defense Forces on Russian territory will stop,” Tikhy concluded.
