KYIV: Ukraine said on Wednesday its army would allow the evacuation of civilians from Russia’s Kursk region into Russia and Ukraine and create a buffer zone in the area where its troops launched a major offensive.

Catching Russian troops by surprise, the Ukrainian army entered Russia’s Kursk region on August 6, capturing dozens of settlements and triggering the evacuation of tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

“The creation of a buffer zone in the Kursk region is a step to protect our border communities from daily hostile shelling,” Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said.

Ukrainian officials have said the Kursk offensive was an act of self-defence against Russian troops, whose full-scale invasion stretches into its third year. Klymenko made the announcement after a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials.

US president argues Ukraine incursion a big dilemma for Putin

“Our military forces plan to... open humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians: both in the direction of Russia and of Ukraine,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said after the meeting. She also said there were plans for humanitarian operations, including with the help of international organisations, in the area.

Ukrainian rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said the Ukrainian officials had “discussed access for representatives of the ICRC, the UN and other impartial international organisations to carry out humanitarian activities”.

Ukraine said its forces had advanced further into Russia’s Kursk region in the biggest foreign incursion into Russia since World War Two, posing a dilemma for President Vladimir Putin, according to US President Joe Biden.

Thousands of Ukrainian troops rammed through the Russian border in the early hours of Aug 6 into Russia’s western Kursk region in what Putin called a major provocation aimed at gaining a stronger hand in possible future ceasefire talks. Ukraine has carved out a slice of the Russian border region of Kursk and though Putin said the Russian army would push out the Ukrainian troops, more than a week of intense battles have so far failed to oust them.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv’s forces were continuing to gain ground in the Kursk region and that they had taken another one to two kilometres on Wednesday. “We continue to advance further in the Kursk region,” Zelenskiy wrote in a statement on Telegram, “from one to two kilometres in various areas since the start of the day. And more than 100 Russian prisoners of war in the same period.”

Russia’s defence ministry said 117 Ukrainian drones had been shot down within its territory overnight, mostly in the Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod and Nizhny Novgorod regions. It said missiles had also been downed, and showed Sukhoi Su-34 bombers striking Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region.

Later, the ministry said Russian forces had repelled a series of Ukrainian attacks inside the Kursk region, including at Russkoye Porechnoye 18 km from the border, and pro-Russian war bloggers said the front has

been stabilised. But Ukraine’s unprecedented incursion also comes with major risks for Russia, Ukraine and the West, which is keen to avoid a direct confrontation between Russia and the US-led Nato military alliance that has helped arm Kyiv against Moscow.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2024