Ukraine says incursion is aimed at forcing Russia into ‘fair’ talks

Ukraine said yesterday that its incursion into Russian territory was aimed at forcing Russia to negotiate on “fair” terms, as Moscow’s troops announced new gains in eastern Ukraine.
Two and a half years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s troops last week launched a major counter-offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, sending more than 120,000 people fleeing.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s aide Mykhailo Podolyak said yesterday that Ukraine wanted to negotiate “on our own terms”.
“We have absolutely no plans to beg: ‘Please, sit down to negotiate’, he wrote on X. “Instead, we have a proven, effective means of coercion. In addition to economic and diplomatic ones...we need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia.”
“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process,” he said.
Ukraine has ruled out any talks with Russia if Russian troops do not leave its territory.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia would declare a ceasefire only if Kyiv withdraws from the four regions that Russia claims to have annexed but only partially controls – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Ukraine meanwhile claims to have seized over 1,100sq km of Russian territory, in the biggest attack by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II.
“I was very scared, very scared,” Nina Golinyaeva, a former resident of the border town of Sudzha, told AFP at an evacuation centre in Kursk city, the regional capital.
“Shells were flying from all sides, helicopters, planes, fighter jets were flying over the house,” she said, recounting a dramatic night-time escape amid the fighting.
“We don’t know what to do. We cry day and night, every day. We don’t know what we are going to do,” said 70-year-old Zinaida Tarasyuk, another evacuee collecting humanitarian aid.
“We left everything,” she added.
Kyiv claims to have taken control of more than 80 settlements in the lightning incursion.
The governor of the Kursk region said on Monday that Ukraine had seized 28 settlements.
The attack has been a morale boost for Ukraine, where many say it is giving Russian civilians a taste of what Ukrainians have been facing on a daily basis since the start of Russia’s full-scale assault in February 2022.
However, the incursion appears to have had little impact on the larger battles raging in Russian-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine.
The Russian defence ministry said yesterday that its troops had captured another village near the Ukrainian-held logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
The head of Pokrovsk’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, has urged people to evacuate.
“The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said on Telegram.
On the other side of the front line, Russian-installed authorities said at least seven people were injured by a Ukrainian strike on a supermarket in the Russian-held city of Donetsk.
In Kursk region, a pro-Kremlin organisation said two of its employees helping evacuations were killed by a strike on their car.
Russia’s defence ministry also said it had repelled a night-time attack using 12 US-made missiles on the landmark Crimea bridge built on the orders of President Vladimir Putin after Moscow annexed the peninsula.
Kyiv has launched multiple attacks and attempted attacks on the Kerch Bridge since Moscow began its military offensive.
An influential aide to Putin has meanwhile accused the West and the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) alliance of having helped to plan Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russia’s Kursk region, something Washington has denied.
The United States and Western powers, eager to avoid direct military confrontation with Russia, said Ukraine had not given advance notice and that Washington was not involved, though weaponry provided by Britain and the US is reported to have been used on Russian soil.
Influential veteran Kremlin hawk Nikolai Patrushev dismissed the Western assertions in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper.
“The operation in the Kursk region was also planned with the participation of Nato and Western special services,” he was quoted as saying, without offering evidence. “Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory.”
The remarks implied that Ukraine’s first acknowledged foray into sovereign Russian territory carried a high risk of escalation.
Putin chaired a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, including Patrushev, and said that the discussion would focus on “new technical solutions” being employed in the military operation.
“Washington’s efforts have created all the prerequisites for Ukraine to lose its sovereignty and lose part of its territories,” Patrushev said.
While the Ukrainian attack has revealed weaknesses in Russian defences and changed the public narrative of the conflict, Russian officials said Ukraine’s “terrorist invasion” would not change the course of the war.