Speaking to members of the foreign press in the capital Kyiv, the Ukrainian president said that the incursion into Kursk was launched “preventively” to stop Russia from occupying the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Sumy.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his forces have seized more territory in Kursk as they advance deeper into the Russian region.
In his nightly video address he said Ukrainian troops had advanced up to three kilometres and taken control of two more settlements, without naming them.
Speaking to members of the foreign press in the capital Kyiv earlier on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that the incursion into Kursk was launched “preventively” in order to stop Russia from occupying the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Sumy.
“Russia prepared an invasion of the Kharkiv region and wanted to occupy millions of people in the city of Kharkiv. Today 1.5 million people live there because Russia attacked this direction and destroyed houses in small towns and villages of Kharkiv region,” he said.
“People came to Kharkiv and there are now 1.5 million people there. Russia wants to occupy this city, it was part of their operation, but we disrupted this offensive.”
Zelenskyy’s comments come after a British national working for Reuters was killed in a Russian strike on a hotel in Kramatorsk.
The body of safety advisor Ryan Evans was found under the rubble on Sunday after a missile hit the Hotel Sapphire in the eastern Ukrainian city the night before.
Four of the six injured are part of the same Reuters team. One of them is Ukrainian, and the other three are foreigners from the US, Latvia and Germany.
Two were being treated in the hospital on Sunday.
Local officials said that the hotel had been struck by an Iskander ballistic missile, leaving the news team with blast injuries, concussion and cuts on the body.
Reporters at the scene described the former hotel as “rubble”, with excavators still being used to clear debris hours after the attack.
Meanwhile, residents in Ukraine’s Sumy region, just over the border from Kursk, are subject to almost constant shelling by Russian forces.
“Most of the strikes hit civilians. In the last round, they are also attacking with the help of KAB guided bombs,” said Vadim Mysnik, a spokesperson for the Siversk Operational and Tactical Group.
Further south in the Donetsk region, evacuations continue as the Russian army advances more rapidly in eastern Ukraine.
People have been forced to leave frontline villages and towns to escape the shelling.
ADVERTISEMENT“There is no one left in our house at all. Maybe two apartments are occupied in the stairwell. Of course, they are leaving. Look, the last dentist’s office was moved and now the pharmacy. We are left without any pharmacy,” said Myrnohrad resident, Galina.
Ukrainian military and regional authorities said on Sunday that Russian attacks on northern, eastern and southern Ukraine had killed at least four people and injured 37 on Sunday.
Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram that overnight strikes had targeted the frontline regions of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk.
But despite Zelenskyy’s claim that the Kursk incursion was supposed to create a buffer zone to prevent attacks on Ukraine, Russia has continued to pummel border regions.
ADVERTISEMENT“Most of the missiles did not reach their targets,” the air force said in a statement without specifying how many had been destroyed.
