Almost 200,000 civilians have been ordered to leave their homes as Moscow struggles to halt assault and Kyiv launches drone strikes on airbases deep into Russia
Tom Ball and Marc Bennetts
August 15, 2024
The Times
Thousands more evacuations have been ordered in Russia as Moscow scrambles to halt Ukrainian forces’ “rapid” advances. About 20,000 more civilians in the Kursk region have been ordered to evacuate as the acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said on Wednesday night that the entire population of the Glushkov district would be moved. As of Thursday, nearly 200,000 people were being evacuated following last week’s assault, Russian officials said.
Ukraine’s incursion is “generating tangible defensive, logistical and security impacts within Russia”, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think tank. Its analysis suggests that Ukrainian soldiers are still advancing, albeit at a “generally slower tempo” than at the outset of the attack, as Russian forces continued “to stabilise the front line in the area”.
Moscow’s troops are hastily digging trenches 17 kilometres north of Ukraine’s furthest position in Kursk, according to the ISW, with Russia “concerned about potential continued and rapid Ukrainian mechanised northward advances”.
General Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of the Ukrainian army, said on Wednesday that his forces had captured more than 15 square miles of territory within 24 hours, taking 100 Russian troops captive.
Zelensky said he had ordered his military to take the next “key steps” but did not give details. The incursion is the first time since the Second World War that Russia has lost territory to a foreign army. His comments followed what a Kyiv security source said was Ukraine’s biggest drone strike on Russia to date, aimed at preventing warplanes from launching glide bombs at Ukrainian towns and cities.
On Wednesday night Ukraine launched dozens of drones at Russian border regions and areas deeper into the vast country. A fire was reported at Baltimore airbase in Voronezh after an apparent drone strike.
Another strike was reported at the Savasleyka airfield in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 270 miles east of Moscow. Other drone attacks were reported elsewhere in the Voronezh region, as well as one in the Kursk region.
Zelensky hailed the strikes, but said: “There are things you can’t do with drones alone. For that another weapon is needed — a missile.” He urged western countries to be “bolder”.
Ukraine’s allies have permitted Kyiv to hit Russian targets on the border, but have so far been reluctant to approve longer-range strikes. Ukrainian officials say the policy means that Kyiv is unable to strike critical blows against President Putin’s war machine.
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that Ukraine was free to use British weapons during the Kursk operation. However, Ukraine has yet to receive approval to strike targets deep inside Russia with British Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which have a range of 155 miles.
The Swedish defence minister, Pal Jonson, said on Thursday that “Ukraine has the right to defend itself both inside and outside its territory”.
Syrsky said Ukraine had also shot down a Russian SU-34 bomber worth £30 million. “The skies over the Kursk region became clearer,” he wrote on Telegram.
More than a week after the start of the surprise attack into the Kursk region, the Ukrainian army is in control of almost 400 square miles of Russian territory, according to Syrsky, occupying 74 villages and small towns. The Russian National Guard said it was increasing security at the Kursk nuclear power plant, 22 miles from the fighting. “The situation still remains difficult,” Yuri Podolyaka, an influential pro-Russian military blogger, admitted. “The enemy still has the initiative and so, albeit slowly, it is increasing its presence in the Kursk region.”
Up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers are thought to be involved. Adalby Shkhagoshev, an MP with Putin’s ruling party, alleged that MI6 was orchestrating the operation, which is believed to involve western military hardware. He provided no evidence for his claim.
As fighting spilt over into the neighbouring region of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday morning, describing the situation as “extremely difficult and tense” owing to intense shelling and drone attacks. “Houses are destroyed, civilians died and were injured,” he said.
Moscow said that 12 Russian civilians had been killed and more than 120 injured while claiming to have killed more than over 2,300 Ukrainian personnel since the start of the incursion. It accused Kyiv’s forces of shooting indiscriminately at civilians but provided no evidence.
President Biden has said that he had been in constant contact with Kyiv over the past week, although the White House said earlier that it was not engaged in any aspect of planning or preparation of the incursion. “It’s creating a real dilemma for Putin,” Biden said.
Zelensky has described the incursion as an attempt to “bring home” the war to Putin’s regime and destabilise Russia. He said that the enemy had launched more than 2,000 attacks from the Kursk region, making it a necessary target.
After months of steady Russian gains along the front lines in the Donetsk region, the operation has boosted Ukrainian morale. It has forced Russia to redeploy troops, which may relieve some of the pressure on Ukraine’s beleaguered forces.
Russian troops are continuing to make advances in the Donetsk region, however, including towards the strategically important towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk.
Ukrainian media reported on Wednesday from Sudzha, a Russian town about six miles from the border that now appears to be completely controlled by Kyiv’s forces.
A television report by the Kyiv-based channel TSN showed Ukrainian soldiers in the town tearing a Russian flag from a government building and shouting “slava Ukraini” (glory to Ukraine). The reporter responded: “heroiam slava” (glory to the heroes).
The channel said about a hundred people were left in the town, which had a pre-war population of 5,100, living in basements and running out of food. “A charred column of Russian army equipment remains at the entrance to the city,” TSN reported.
At a meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv, Syrsky said that Russian troops had retreated from the town. “The search and destruction of the enemy in the settlement of Sudzha has been completed,” he said.
Kyiv said it would organise an evacuation corridor in the Kursk region for civilians, who would be free to travel to Ukraine or on to Kremlin-controlled areas of Russia, and would seek to create a buffer zone to prevent the shelling of border settlements by Russian forces.
Laurynas Kasciunas, the Lithuanian defence minister, said that Moscow had begun redeploying troops stationed in the heavily fortified Russian territory of Kaliningrad, which sits between Lithuania and Poland.
Sudzha is a key transit point for Russian gas flowing through Ukraine and into the European Union. The fate of a vital gas metering station in the town is unclear, although satellite imagery published by Radio Liberty suggested it had been badly damaged.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said earlier that Kyiv was “not interested in taking over” Russian territory but that its incursion would continue until Russia agreed to peace. “Unlike Russia, Ukraine does not need other people’s property. Ukraine is not interested in taking the territory of the Kursk region, but we want to protect the lives of our people,” a spokesman said.
In Moscow, security services are on alert for Ukrainian saboteurs who may have slipped into Russia during the fighting in the Kursk region. Security in the centre of the city and around the Kremlin has been boosted, according to Baza, a Russian media outlet with links to the security services.
Marc Bennetts has been covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, for The Times and Sunday Times since 2015. He has reported from all across Russia, from Chechnya to deepest Siberia. He has also reported from Iran and North Korea. Marc is the author of two books: I’m Going to Ruin Their Lives, about Putin’s crackdown on the opposition, and Football Dynamo, about Russian football culture. He is now writing a thriller, set during the polar night in Russia’s far north.
Tom Ball is northern correspondent for The Times, based in Manchester. He covers everything north of the Midlands and up to the borders, including local politics, crime and the environment, and he has also written undercover investigations. Before joining the paper in 2019 he lived in Russia.