Russia launches counter-offensive to reclaim Kursk border region

Russia has launched a major counter-offensive to reclaim the Kursk border region which has been held by Ukraine following a surprise incursion five weeks ago. Russian and Ukrainian sources have confirmed that Kyiv’s troops had started losing their grip on some of the ground they seized from their blistering August 6 offensive. On Thursday, Russia said its army had recaptured a total of 10 settlements in its Kursk border region, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also conceding Russia had launched its own counter-attack in the region, but insisted that the shock incursion was still going to plan.

‘Units of the ‘North’ group of troops liberated 10 settlements within two days,’ Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement posted on its Telegram channel. They also said Ukraine had sustained about 12,200 casualties and lost nearly 100 tanks. Mash, a pro-Kremlin channel on Telegram, reported that Moscow’s forces had advanced up to 150 sq km into Ukrainian-held Kursk in a ‘local counter-offensive in the region’. Ukraine claimed at the end of August to have taken control of some 100 Russian settlements and almost 1,300 sq km of territory.

The surprise offensive launched on August 6 is the first time a foreign army has taken control of parts of Russia since World War II. ‘The Russians have launched counter-offensive actions,’ Zelensky said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday. He did not provide details on the extent of Russian operations, but said the incursion was ‘going in line with our Ukrainian plan’. Deep State, a Ukrainian war blog, reported that Russians were able to launch the offensive after ferrying armored vehicles across the river.

‘The situation on the left flank of our group in Kursk worsened,’ it wrote in a post late on Tuesday. Russian forces knocked out power and water to a rail hub in Northern Ukraine and severed water supplies to the eastern town of Pokrovsk, causing disruption behind the front lines as they try to advance on the battlefield. Donetsk’s regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, said it would be impossible to fix soon and renewed calls to civilians to flee the town.

‘The situation is difficult and it won’t get better soon. So I again call on you to evacuate!’ the official wrote in a statement on Telegram. With Russia gaining ground in crucial Pokrovsk – Moscow may be able to open up new lines of attack and complicate Ukrainian logistics in the east. Russian momentum has slowed in the areas nearest Pokrovsk, but Moscow’s forces have pressed south from that line of attack, closing in on the nearby town of Ukrainsk, open-source intelligence reports by Ukraine’s Deep State analysts indicate.

Ukraine’s military said their forces on the nearby Kurakhiv front, which includes Ukrainsk, were continuing to hold back Moscow’s troops. Russia tried to break through Kyiv’s lines in the area 23 times over the last day, it said. Some Russian military bloggers said Moscow’s forces had almost taken control of Ukrainsk, which had a pre-war population of more than 10,000. More than two-and-a-half years since Russia’s invasion, the war in Ukraine is now at a critical juncture, with Moscow regularly pounding Ukrainian infrastructure as its troops try to complete the capture of the whole of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

The United States says Iran has supplied hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia in a major escalation. Moscow has warned the West against greenlighting deep strikes into Russian territory with Western weapons, warning it would respond. The city of Konotop, a rail hub in Sumy region which Kyiv used as a staging ground for its cross-border incursion, reported heavy damage from an overnight Russian drone attack.

Local officials said at least 14 people had been hurt in an attack that ‘significantly’ damaged energy infrastructure and cut electricity to the settlement. Rescuers were working to restore power in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 83,000. Regional officials said there were 10 explosions during the attack and Mayor Artem Semenikhin said the power system was in critical condition. ‘At the moment, energy workers are doing everything they can to provide electricity to the hospital and the water supply system,’ he said early on Thursday.

The strike on Konotop was part of a broader Russian attack using 64 drones, the air force said. It shot down 44 of them over nine different regions, it said. Such attacks have become almost nightly occurrences since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Though Ukraine is heavily outgunned and lacks a large arsenal of long-range missiles, it has tried to take the fight back to Russia by launching hundreds of drones at it.

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