KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia has launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region to push back Ukrainian forces that he stormed across the border Five weeks ago, and for the first time since World War II, the territory of Russia found itself under foreign occupation, the Ukrainian president said on Thursday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Moscow forces had retaken 10 settlements in Kursk and named them, but did not describe the fighting as a counteroffensive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was taking “counteroffensive actions” but that Ukrainian forces had anticipated the moves and were ready to fight.
Ukraine has launched its bold invasion to Kursk on August 6, partly in the hope that Russia would redirect its troops there from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, where a Russian army advance threatens to capture a strip of key defensive strongholds.
The cross-border operation also boosted Ukrainian morale after months of gloomy news from the front, exposing Russian weaknesses and seizing the initiative on the battlefield. It also aimed to establish a buffer zone to prevent Russian attacks.
Moscow unclear answer suggested that Russia had not planned for this development and was caught by surprise. Gathering forces for a counterattack, given the long distances and other requirements on a 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, was going to take some time.
The Russian army is pushing deeper into eastern Ukraine, especially Donetsk, and is constantly attacking Ukrainian territory using missiles and drones.
On Thursday, three people were killed and two wounded in a Russian missile attack. All of them were Ukrainian employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said.
It was the worst death toll among the Geneva-based humanitarian organisation’s staff since a bomb explosion at Yemen’s Aden airport in 2020 killed three people.
Key city of eastern Ukraine Pokrovsk Authorities said the country has no access to drinking water or natural gas for cooking and heating, and the destructive activity of the Russian army in the Donetsk region is destroying public infrastructure and forcing civilians to leave their homes.
A water filtration station in Pokrovsk was damaged in recent fighting, and more than 300 hastily drilled water wells are the city’s last source of drinking water, Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said.
The previous day, Russians destroyed a natural gas distribution station near Pokrovsk, Filashkin said. About 18,000 people remained in the city, including 522 children, he said. More than 20,000 people have left the city in the past six weeks as Russian forces advance toward residential areas, Filashkin said.
“Evacuation is the only… choice for civilians,” he added.
Pokrovsk is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistical hub in the Donetsk region. Its capture would threaten Ukraine’s defense capabilities and supply routes and bring Russia closer to its declared goal of capturing the entire Donetsk region, which it partially occupies.
Russian troops supported by artillery and powerful glide bombs turned Donetsk cities and towns such as Bakhmut AND Avdiyevka in bombed missiles, although this attack cost Russia many soldiers and armored vehicles.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded a European tour of Ukraine on Thursday after hearing repeated calls from Ukrainian officials to use Western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes in Russia.
President Joe Biden has allowed Ukraine to fire U.S.-supplied missiles across its border into Russia in self-defense, but has largely limited the distance at which they can be fired. Extending that limit could trigger retaliation from Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that authorizing long-range strikes “would mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are at war with Russia… if that is the case, then with a view to changing the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us.”
Ukrainian forces held out in Donetsk for as long as they could, even when strongholds like Chasow Jar he seemed to be facing an imminent collapse.
Russia fired missiles especially towards power gridpotentially condemning Ukrainians to very cold winter this year.
United States and Great Britain declared nearly $1.5 billion in additional aid for Ukraine on Wednesday during a visit to Kyiv by its top diplomats. Much of that will go toward restoring electricity supplies.
“Once again, we see Putin dusting off his winter playbook, targeting Ukraine’s energy and electrical systems to weaponize the cold against the Ukrainian people,” Blinken said. An overnight drone strike on Konotop, a city in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, largely cut off power supplies, regional officials said.
As a result of the explosion, an “extremely large number” of windows in the city fell out and a significant part of the tram tracks were damaged, said Mayor Artem Semenikhin.
Russia fired a total of 64 Shahed drones and five missiles at eastern, central and northern regions of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a report on Thursday morning.
Ukraine has expressed frustration that its Western partners will not allow it to use advanced modern weapons they supply to hit sites in Russia from which missiles and drones are launched, a move some Western leaders fear could escalate into war.
But after Iran recently delivered ballistic missiles to Russia, the United States says the rules of engagement could change in the coming days as more intense Russian bombing could overwhelm Ukraine’s meager air defenses.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Charlie Dietz said Thursday that long-range U.S. guided missiles like ATACMS will not be able to reach all the locations from which Russia launches some of its assets, adding that “the supply of ATACMS is limited and we have to be sensible about where and when they are deployed.”
In other news, Ukrainian military intelligence reported that it shot down a Russian Su-30SM aircraft over the Black Sea.
The agency posted on social media on Thursday saying the warplane was hit by a portable surface-to-air missile.
Zelensky also released photos of a ship loaded with grain that he said was hit by a Russian missile on Thursday shortly after leaving Ukrainian territorial waters.
As Zelensky wrote on his Telegram profile, the merchant ship was carrying wheat to Egypt, adding that no one was injured as a result of the strike.
Last year, Ukraine managed to break the blockade of the Black Sea and transport millions of tons of grain along the route running along Ukraine’s southern coast.
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Tara Copp from Washington and Jamey Keaten from Geneva contributed to the project.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine on https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraina
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