Extract from ABC News
In short:
About 1,000 Ukrainian troops crossed the border into Russia's Kursk region on Tuesday, supported by tanks, armoured vehicles, drones and artillery.
It's one of the largest Ukrainian attacks on Russia of the two-year war, and comes at a critical juncture in the conflict.
What's next?
The incursion appears designed to show the West that Ukraine can still fight, but it has caused some Russian officials to float the idea of expanding their war on Ukraine.
Russian forces battled Ukrainian troops for a third day on Thursday after they broke through the Russian border in the Kursk region — an audacious attack on the world's biggest nuclear power that has forced Moscow to call in reserves.
In one of the biggest Ukrainian attacks on Russia of the two-year war, about 1,000 Ukrainian troops crossed the Russian border in the early hours of Tuesday with tanks and armoured vehicles, covered in the air by swarms of drones and pounding artillery, according to Russian officials.
Ukrainian forces swept through fields and forests towards the north of the border town of Sudzha, the last operational shipping point for Russian natural gas to Europe through Ukraine.
A state of emergency was declared in Kursk, and several thousand people were being evacuated from the area, according to Russian media.
President Vladimir Putin cast the attack as a "large-scale provocation", while the White House said the United States — Ukraine's biggest backer — had no prior knowledge of the attack and would seek more details from Kyiv.
Russia's most senior general, Valery Gerasimov, told Mr Putin on Wednesday that the Ukrainian offensive had been halted in the border area, while the defence ministry added on Thursday that the army and the Federal Security Service (FSB) were battling Ukrainian units in the Kursk region.
"Units of the Northern group of forces, together with the FSB of Russia, continue to destroy armed formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Sudzhensky and Korenevsky districts of the Kursk region, directly adjacent to the Russian-Ukrainian border," the ministry said.
It said Ukraine had lost 82 armoured vehicles including eight tanks in the attack.
The Ukrainian army has remained silent so far on the Kursk offensive.
Meanwhile, some Russian bloggers have criticised the state of border defences in the Kursk region, saying it had been far too easy for Ukrainian forces to slice through them.
"The enemy passed through our line of defence quite easily," said Yuri Podolyaka, a popular Ukrainian-born pro-Russian military blogger.
Ukraine's defence enters critical juncture
The battles around Sudzha come at a crucial juncture in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has become the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.
Kyiv is concerned that US support could drop off if Republican Donald Trump wins the November presidential election.
Trump has said on several occasions that he could end the war within one day if elected — without explaining how — and both Russia and Ukraine are keen to gain the strongest possible bargaining position on the battlefield.
Ukraine wants to pin down Russian forces, which control 18 per cent of its territory, though the strategic significance of its incursion into Russia was not immediately clear.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the Ukrainian attack was an attempt to force Russia to divert resources from the front in Ukraine and to show the West that Ukraine could still fight.
As a result of the Kursk attack, Mr Medvedev said, Russia should expand its war aims to include taking all of Ukraine.
"From this moment on, the SVO [Special Military Operation — what Russia calls its invasion of Ukraine] should acquire an openly extraterritorial character," he said, adding that Russian forces should go to Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mykolayiv, Kyiv "and beyond".
"We will stop only when we consider it acceptable and profitable for ourselves."
Gas was still flowing through Sudzha on Thursday. Russia's National Guard said it had also beefed up security around the Kursk nuclear power station, which lies about 60 kilometres north-east of the town.
Reuters
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