Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov declared a state of emergency on Wednesday as Ukrainian forces pummeled the region with missile and drone strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking in public about Ukraine’s surprisingly effective incursion into Russia, claimed his forces are now in control of 74 towns and villages in Kursk.
“Hundreds of Russian servicemen have already surrendered, and all of them will receive humane treatment – they did not experience such treatment even in their own Russian army,” Zelensky said.
“We have proven once again that we, Ukrainians, are capable of achieving our goals in any situation – capable of defending our interests and our independence,” he boasted.
Gladkov, in his own considerably dourer address on the Telegram messaging platform, described the situation in Belgorod as “extremely difficult and tense.”
“Houses are destroyed. Civilians died and were injured,” he said.
Varying estimates from foreign observers say Ukrainian forces advanced up to three kilometers on Tuesday, demolishing claims from Russian officials that the incursion had been repelled.
Zelensky said on Wednesday he is discussing the possibility of setting up a military administration for the Russian territory Ukraine has captured. His interior minister, Ihor Kymenko, said the conquered terrain should be seen as a “buffer zone” to protect Ukrainian communities from “daily enemy attacks.”
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said humanitarian corridors leading to both Russia and Ukraine would be created in the conflict zone so civilians could evacuate, and to provide access to international humanitarian operations.
Pro-Russian military blogger Yuri Podolyaka, a Ukrainian by birth, said the situation for Russia’s forces in Kursk was “difficult” because Ukraine “still has the initiative” and is slowly “increasing its presence in the Kursk region.”
Russian state media, on the other hand, insisted for the eighth day in a row that Russian forces were “turning the tide” against the invaders, and that Ukraine actually controls less than half of the territory it claims.
The BBC noted on Wednesday that the Ukrainian invasion is rattling President Vladimir Putin’s image among his people as “Mr. Security.” Putin refuses to describe the Ukrainian offensive as an “invasion,” instead using delicate euphemisms like “the situation in the border area.”
In addition to rattling Putin and gaining some leverage in peace negotiations, Ukraine might have launched the invasion to push Russian forces back into defensive positions and give some relief to front-line towns in Ukraine.
This objective appears to have been met, at least for the moment, as Russian forces are reportedly falling back out of Ukraine and heading for Kursk. Russia has not, however, repositioned any of the units involved in its most successful advance into eastern Ukraine.
The Russians also seem reluctant to weaken their presence in Donetsk, one of the two breakaway regions of Ukraine with ethnic Russian populations that Putin vowed to “liberate” when he invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine’s push into Russia has not been an unmitigated success. The Ukrainians appear to have failed in their effort to capture the town of Giri and retreated after taking significant losses.
The New York Times (NYT) published an interesting retrospective of the Ukrainian invasion on Tuesday that noted how carefully preparations were kept secret, including from the Biden administration, even though American equipment was used in the operation. The Pentagon appears to be comfortable with Ukraine’s actions, provided they stick with their avowed goal of carving out a security buffer to protect their own communities from Russian shelling.
An embarrassing detail for the Russians is that some of their scouts and war-supporting citizens did notice Ukraine moving its forces into position for the attack, up to a month ago, but the Russian high command dismissed their warnings, arrogantly convinced the Ukrainians would never dare push into Russian territory.
Ukrainian soldiers told the NYT their sudden mechanized offensive, punching through a space on the Kursk border with minimal defensive fortifications, caught the Russians completely by surprise. Some panicked Russian troops fled or surrendered. A thousand Ukrainian soldiers were across the border before the Biden administration knew what was happening.
On Wednesday afternoon, Ukrainian officials said they conducted the largest long-range drone strike of the war, hitting four Russian military airbases up to 500 miles inside Russian territory. The officials said these airbases have been used to launch glide bomb attacks against Ukrainian cities.
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