Russia battles Ukrainian troops for a third day following shock incursion

Russian forces were battling Ukrainian troops for a third day yesterday after they smashed 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-old war, around 1,000 Ukrainian troops rammed through the Russian border in the early hours of August 6 with tanks and armoured vehicles, covered in the air by swarms of drones and pounding artillery, according to Russian officials.Heavy fighting was reported near the town of Sudzha, where Russian natural gas flows into Ukraine, raising concerns about a possible sudden stop to transit flows to Europe.The incursion has come as a shock to Russia, nearly two-and-a-half years since President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine in February 2022.Putin has cast the Ukrainian offensive as a "major provocation”.Sergei Mironov, leader of a Kremlin-loyal political party, called it a "terrorist attack” and "the invasion of an internationally recognised foreign territory”.Kursk’s regional acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said that thousands of residents had been evacuated.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 defence ministry said yesterday that the army and the Federal Security Service (FSB) had halted the Ukrainian advance and 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.The Ukrainian military has remained silent on the Kursk offensive, though President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the Ukrainian army yesterday for its ability "to surprise” and achieve results.He did not explicitly reference Kursk.Zelensky said that Russia needed to "feel” the consequences of its war."Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done,” he said in his evening address, without directly referring to the offensive. "Ukrainians know how to achieve their goals. And we did not choose to achieve our goals in the war.”Kyiv has not officially taken responsibility for the operation, but an aide to Zelensky said Moscow was to blame."The root cause of any escalation, shelling, military actions, forced evacuations and destruction of normal life forms – including within the Russian Federation’s own territories like Kursk and Belgorod regions – is solely Russia’s unequivocal aggression,” presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said yesterday on social media.Some Russian bloggers said Ukraine’s forces were pushing towards the Kursk nuclear power station, which lies about 60km (37 miles) northeast of Sudzha.Yuri Podolyaka, a popular Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger, said that there were intense battles about 30km from the Soviet-era nuclear plant, which supplies a large swathe of southern Russia with power.Ukraine’s energy minister said gas transit via Sudzha was still functioning, despite reports of hostilities there.Most EU nations have reduced their dependence on Russian gas, but Austria is one country that still receives most of its gas via Ukraine.The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), a non-profit open-source analysis organisation, said it was unable to visually confirm any damage to the gas metering station as a result of the incursion, but had verified significant damage to the border checkpoint about 500m to the south."This, combined with footage verified by CIR of several Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainian soldiers near the entrance of the gas metering plant, makes it likely that the plant has been affected by the Ukrainian incursion, however, the level of damage cannot be verified at this time,” it said.The battles come at a crucial juncture in the conflict, the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.Kyiv is concerned that US support could weaken if Republican Donald Trump wins the November presidential election.Trump has said he would end the war, 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% of its territory, though the strategic significance of the border offensive 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 and to show the West that Ukraine could still fight.As a result of the Kursk attack, Medvedev said, Russia should expand its war aims to include taking all of Ukraine."From this moment on, the SVO (Special Military Operation) should acquire an openly extraterritorial character,” Medvedev 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,” he said.