Kursk Raid: Russia Forced to Send in Reserves as Ukraine Takes Over Villages

Russia moved reserve troops to one of its border regions and repelled Ukrainian attacks after Kiev’s troops crossed the Kursk Reservoir early Tuesday morning, the Russian government said. That came despite reports that Ukraine had managed to consolidate positions on Russian territory.

Russian troops have prevented a border breach after Ukraine launched attacks on the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, acting regional governor Alexei Smirnov said in a statement Tuesday morning.

Russian military bloggers — whose accounts often serve as indicators of war developments but tend to align with the Kremlin — wrote that fierce fighting broke out after Kiev attacked several sections of the border.

The Russian Defense Ministry then said Ukraine had attacked the Kursk border settlements of Nikolaevo-Daryno and Oleshnya since about 8 a.m. Moscow time on Tuesday. The city of Sudzha, which Smirnov described as the target of the cross-border attack, has been almost completely evacuated, Russian Telegram channels reported.

Fighters from Kiev’s 22nd Mechanized Brigade, along with 11 tanks and more than 20 armored vehicles, crossed the border into Russia, the Kremlin said. Moscow repelled the attack, moving Russian reserve forces to the area of ​​the clash.

But Russian military bloggers said Wednesday that attempts to repel the Ukrainian airstrike had failed. “By evening, it finally became clear that it would be impossible to dislodge enemy forces from the territory they occupied,” one prominent Russian military blogger wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “The coming day will be difficult.”

Another report describes the difficult situation in Kursk, where Ukraine managed to “strengthen its positions in the border zone, despite intensive strikes and attacks by Russian troops.”

Russian aircraft attacked Ukrainian positions in the northeastern Sumy region, southwest of Kursk, Moscow said.

“The tense situation remains in the village of Oleshnya, where Russian soldiers are almost completely surrounded and are engaged in fierce fighting with a numerically superior enemy,” wrote influential military reporter Rybar on Wednesday morning.

Andriy Kovalenko, an official at the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said the Kremlin was “lying about its ability to control the situation in the Kursk region.”

“Russia does not control the border,” Kovalenko said in a statement.

Russia’s border regions, including Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk, which overlook northeastern Ukraine, have been regularly hit by Moscow’s full-scale invasion. The regions have consistently reported cross-border shelling and Ukrainian drone attacks during the nearly two-and-a-half years of war.

Earlier this year, anti-Kremlin Ukrainian Russian organizations said they had launched an invasion of Belgorod and Kursk from Ukrainian territory. Moscow blamed Ukrainian “terrorist formations” for the outbreak of fighting on the border.

Kiev said at the time that the organizations, including the Freedom Legion of Russia, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion, were not official Ukrainian organizations but that Ukraine “would try to help them as much as possible.”

The Freedom Legion of Russia and Ukraine’s 22nd Mechanized Brigade declined to comment to The Associated Press on Tuesday’s border raid.

Russia said Tuesday that Ukrainian forces in Kursk lost six tanks, two infantry fighting vehicles and eight other vehicles in the attack.

Open intelligence sources indicated that Russian trailers carrying tanks near the border were destroyed, as was a Ka-52 attack helicopter. Others indicated that Russia lost two tanks.

Reports also suggested that Ukraine lost an air defense system, several armored vehicles and a Stryker armored personnel carrier. It is not possible to independently verify these reports.

In a separate statement Wednesday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had intercepted four Ukrainian drones over Kursk overnight, as well as three in the neighboring Belgorod region, two over Rostov and another two over Voronezh.