Kyiv hopes the military operation, which started on August 6, will shift the dynamic of the more than two-year-old conflict but officials in Kyiv have stressed the aim of the operation is not to occupy Russia.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been briefed by army chief Oleksandr Syrski about the ongoing surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
“The advance forces are continuing to take part in battles. There have been advances from one to three kilometres towards the enemy in some areas,” Syrskyi said in the virtual meeting.
Zelenskyy inquired about the capture of Russian service members in order to exchange them for captive Ukrainians and Syrskyi assured the president that ongoing battles would replenish what he called the “exchange fund.”
A daring Ukrainian military push into Russia’s Kursk region has seen Kyiv’s forces seize several villages, take hundreds of prisoners and force the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians in what has become the largest attack on Russia since World War II.
In more than a week of fighting, Russian troops are still struggling to drive out Ukraine’s forces.
“We see that the occupier is suffering losses and this is helpful, very helpful for our defence. It is about destroying the logistics of the Russian army and draining their reserves,” Zelenskyy said in his regular nightly address.
“We must inflict maximum damage on all Russian positions, and we are doing that. I thank each of our warriors for their precision, I thank them for strength and for resilience.”
Kyiv hopes that the surprise incursion into Russia, which started on August 6, will change the dynamic of the more than two-year-old conflict.
But Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that the aim of the operation is not to occupy Russia.
“Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories,” one of Zelenskyy’s senior aides, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on X on Friday.
“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process,” he said.
Meanwhile, officials in Russia’s Belgorod region have said they will start to evacuate five villages from Monday.
“From 19 August, we are closing access to five settlements, removing residents and helping them bring out their property,” governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram.
But as the Ukrainian military advance continues in Kursk, so too do Russian gains in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow said on Friday that its troops had captured the town of Serhiivka, the latest settlement to fall to Russian forces in recent weeks.
