Ukraine has launched what it described as the war’s largest drone attack on Russian airfields as Kyiv’s forces are facing increased resistance nine days into their daring incursion into Russia.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that Ukraine had fired 117 drones, as well as missiles, not only in the Kursk region where Ukrainian troops had seized territory, but also in the regions of Voronezh, Belgorod and Nizhny Novgorod. It did not confirm the attacks had targeted its air bases.
“Long-range drones of the security service of Ukraine and defence forces carried out the largest attack on Russian military airfields of the entire war,” an official in the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, told the Financial Times.
The official said the airfields of Voronezh, Kursk, Savasleyka and Borisoglebsk had been targeted in order to prevent Russian air attacks on Ukraine. It was not immediately clear whether any Russian aircraft were damaged or destroyed, and the official said Kyiv was waiting for satellite photos to assess the destruction.
Meanwhile, the rate at which Ukraine is seizing territory in the Kursk region appears to have slowed.
“We are advancing in the Kursk region, one to two kilometres in various areas since the beginning of the day,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on Wednesday. He added that Ukrainian forces had “captured more than 100 Russian servicemen” over the past day.
Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Monday that Ukrainian forces were holding 1,000 sq km of Russian territory. But 24 hours later, he said that they had occupied just a further 40 sq km.
Deep State, a Ukrainian analytical group that works closely with the defence ministry, has put the total at 800 sq km, but has only mapped 330 sq km in order to not give away sensitive Ukrainian positions.
The group’s co-founder, Roman Pohorilyi, told the Financial Times that the area under Ukrainian control was close to Syrsky’s estimate.
“[The] Muscovites are disoriented, they do not fully understand what is happening,” said Pohorilyi. He added that the secrecy about the exact Ukrainian positions helped keep Russians in the dark.
Russian military blogger Alexander Kots said that Ukrainian troops had appeared in Giri, 25km south-east of the area deemed under Ukrainian control by Deep State. But they were pushed out by Russian forces, he said.
The Russian defence ministry on Wednesday said its forces had stopped Ukrainian vehicles from breaking through “deep into Russian territory” in several areas. Moscow said it destroyed two convoys headed north of Sudzha — a town now under Ukrainian control, according to Kyiv.
Russia has scrambled to contain the Ukrainian incursion, with President Vladimir Putin calling it a “provocation” and pledging a “worthy response”.
An “anti-terrorist” operation was declared on August 9 by Russia’s central authorities for Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk regions, all of which border Ukraine. This allows the authorities to restrict movement of residents and gives the security services full access to the area.
Kursk’s neighbouring Belgorod region on Wednesday declared a state of emergency and increased civilian evacuations. Belgorod, which was raided briefly by pro-Kyiv militias in June 2023, has been shelled for more than a year, according to governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
“The situation in the Belgorod region continues to be extremely difficult and tense,” said Gladkov.
In the Kursk region, over 121,000 residents were evacuated from the border area in the first week, according to its acting governor, Alexei Smirnov. The displaced residents might be temporarily housed in the part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region that Russia occupied in 2022, Smirnov added.
Zelenskyy said the operation aimed to put “pressure” on Russia and pre-empt further attacks on the Ukrainian border region of Sumy.
Ukraine’s general staff said its troops shot down a Russian Su-34 bomber jet “during a combat mission” in the Kursk region early on Wednesday. The Russian bombers are used to drop massive glide bombs on Ukrainian military positions and civilian infrastructure.
Putin earlier this week accused Zelenskyy of seeking to use the seized territory as a bargaining chip in any upcoming peace talks. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Kyiv did not plan to hold the captured land.
Analysts said another Ukrainian goal was to force Moscow to redeploy troops from Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Russia is slowly making gains. So far there is no evidence that is happening, as Russian reinforcements have come from the mainland.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Kyiv “has not achieved the main goal of the attack on the Kursk region — to divert Russian troops”.
Analysts and some Ukrainian soldiers have expressed concern that Kyiv’s decision to redirect some of its most elite units to Kursk could weaken defences in strategically important areas.
On Wednesday, Zelenskyy attempted to assuage those concerns.
“We are not forgetting our eastern front for a second,” he said. “I have instructed the commander-in-chief to strengthen this direction using the equipment and supplies currently provided by our partners.”
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