Russian officials Wednesday announced evacuation of 20,000 more people as Ukrainian troops continued their push into the Kursk region.
Acting Governor Alexei Smirnov said on the Telegram messaging app that police and other authorities would coordinate the evacuation of the Glushkov district, which borders Ukraine.
Russia has evacuated nearly 200,000 people since Ukraine launched its cross-border attack August 6.
Ukrainian military commander General Oleksandr Syrskyi said more than 100 Russian soldiers were taken prisoner, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said they would eventually be traded for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
“Our advance in the Kursk region is going well today – we are reaching our strategic goal,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Wednesday.
“The ‘exchange fund’ for our state has also been significantly replenished,” he said.
Ukraine’s cross-border invasion advanced 1 to 2 kilometers into the Kursk region since the start of the day and its troops had finished clearing the Russian border town of Sudzha of Moscow’s forces, Zelenskyy said.
In the first incursion onto Russian soil since World War II, Ukrainian troops have taken control of up to 1,000 square kilometers of land.
“It is important that Ukraine fights by the rules, and the humanitarian needs that exist in this area must be met,” he added.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereschuk said the military would open humanitarian corridors so civilians in the Kursk region under Ukrainian control could go elsewhere in Russia or Ukraine.
“The more the Russian military presence in the border area is destroyed, the closer peace and real security will be for our country,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday. “The Russian state must be held accountable for what it has done.”
While Kyiv has said it has no intention of permanently holding the Russian territory, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said Ukraine wants to create a buffer zone to prevent Russian strikes.
“The creation of a buffer zone in the Kursk region is a step to protect our border communities from daily hostile shelling,” he said.
Material from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters was used in this report.
