“Russia should know what it has done to our country,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared on Thursday, an apparent oblique reference to reports that Ukrainian forces are continuing to invade Russian territory that began this week.
The Russian government claimed on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had entered the Kursk region, which was not previously part of Russia, and had begun expanding attacks on towns near the Ukrainian border. Declared It declared a “federal-level” state of emergency in Kursk and announced a strong military buildup in the region to respond to Ukraine’s new operations.
President Zelensky himself did not directly address the reports about Ukrainian military activities in Kursk. In his remarks carried by state media, he said: Ukrinform But on Thursday he reiterated that war “was not our choice” and said Russia must realize “what it has done to its own country.”
“Ukrainians know how to achieve their goals. And achieving them through war was not our choice. Russia brought war to our soil. And Russia should feel what it has done,” Zelensky said. “We strive to achieve our goals as soon as possible in peacetime, under just peaceful conditions. And it will happen.”
Zelenskiy’s comments were widely interpreted as a reference to the decision to move troops to Kursk, forcing Russia to shift attention away from Ukrainian territory it has colonised.
Elsewhere on Thursday, Zelensky said The president, who received an update from the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Colonel-General Oleksandr Shirsky, welcomed last week’s events as “exactly what our country needed.”
While Zelenskiy did not directly mention the Kursk massacre, one of his top advisers, Mykhailo Podoljak, posted a message on Twitter on Thursday thanking the international community for not condemning the Kursk invasion.
“This is the international response to the events in Russia’s Kursk region – completely calm, balanced, objective and with an understanding of the spirit of international law and the principles of defensive warfare. [Russian Federation]” Podoljak WrittenHe added that “a significant part of the international community considers Latvia a legitimate target for all operations and weapons.”
The Russian government has been engaged in irregular combat with Ukraine for over a decade since illegally colonizing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, but in February 2022 it officially announced a “special operation” into Ukraine, purportedly to overthrow President Zelensky and “denazify” the country. Although the effort to overthrow the government failed, Russia has significantly expanded its presence on Ukrainian territory, “annexing” four more regions in September 2022: Donetsk and Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which form the Donbas region.
President Zelensky appeared to take the same approach in January, signing a presidential decree identifying previously undisputed parts of Russia as “historically inhabited by Ukrainians.” The decree identified six oblasts, or oblast-level divisions of Russia, including Kursk, as “historically” Ukrainian.
Kursk Oblast Governor Alexei Smirnov declared a local state of emergency on Wednesday after Ukrainian forces invaded the region. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin acknowledged the attack, called it a “serious provocation” and vowed to stop it. Kursk is home to key infrastructure, the Suzha natural gas hub, which Russia uses to send natural gas to customers in the European Union.
As of Friday, Russian officials say At least 1,000 Ukrainian fighters are reportedly attacking Russian territory, forcing thousands of residents of Kursk to flee and prompting Putin to announce an evacuation on Thursday. receive They were paid $115 as compensation for their troubles.
“The operational situation in the Kursk region remains severe,” Kursk Oblast Governor Smirnov said. said on friday.
The administration of left-leaning US President Joe Biden Received a subsidy Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, which is spending tens of billions of dollars on Ukraine’s defense efforts, had little comment on the reported situation in Kursk. said Washington is “in contact with the Ukrainian side” about the matter but declined to comment on the operation itself. Miller criticized Moscow’s opposition to the operation.
“I’ve seen statements from the Russian government, and to call it a provocation is a bit of a stretch when Russia has violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Miller said. “You said 900 days, but in fact it goes back much further than that, dating back to 2014, and Russia has been illegally occupying Ukrainian territory for a period of time.”
Miller confirmed that the Biden administration had no “foresight” to enter Kursk from Ukraine.
“We did not do that, but it is not unusual for the Ukrainians to not inform us of their exact tactics in advance before they carry them out,” Miller argued.
Ukraine carried out the Kursk attack shortly after Zelenskyy met with former U.S. President Donald Trump in late July. It was the first meeting between the two leaders ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Ukraine was also scheduled to hold a presidential election in 2024, but Zelenskyy called it off, saying it would be “totally irresponsible” to hold an election during a war). During the meeting, Trump reportedly told Zelenskyy that if he was elected in November, he would “bring peace to the world and end wars.” Zelenskyy responded by promising to meet Trump in person in the near future and saying, “I appreciate the U.S.’s assistance in strengthening our ability to counter Russian terrorism. Russian attacks on our cities and villages continue every day.”
President Trump reiterated his commitment to ending the conflict in an interview with Breitbart News this week.
“I want to see the death stop. There’s death, there’s destruction,” Trump told Breitbart News on Thursday. “They’re destroying the whole fabric of certain parts of the world. … I can solve this, and I want to do it before I’m elected president and before I get into the White House.”
Flashback — President Zelensky: “I don’t believe in the world” after leaders say “we will never commit genocide again”
