Putin vows to drive Ukraine’s forces out of Russia

Vladimir Putin has vowed to drive Ukrainian forces out of Kursk and back across the border almost a week after they launched a surprise offensive that caught Russia‘s troops completely unawares.

Seeking to blame the incursion on Ukraine’s allies in the West, the humiliated Russian President cursed Kyiv’s troops for refusing to ‘return to a peaceful settlement plan’ before ironically condemning them for ‘intimidating Russian society’ and ‘targeting civilians’. 

‘The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response, and all the goals facing us will, without a doubt, be achieved,’ Putin declared. 

What this response may entail has alarmed Kyiv, with Ukrainian security officials admitting they were worried that Moscow may now target government buildings in the capital with ‘hundreds of missiles’ in a violent bid for revenge. 

It comes as fighting still rages on in the Kursk region with Ukraine’s troops attempting to encircle the key gas transit hub of Sudzha, while other units forged a path to the town of Koronevo – just 35 miles from the Kursk nuclear power station (NPP).

In remarks broadcast this afternoon, Putin declared: ‘It is now clear why the Kyiv regime refused our proposals to return to a peaceful settlement plan. 

‘To all appearances, the enemy, with the help of its Western masters, is doing their will. By the hands of the Ukrainians, the West is at war with us.

‘But what kind of negotiations can we even talk about with people who indiscriminately strike at civilians, at civilian infrastructure, or try to create threats to nuclear power facilities,’ the Russian president asked rhetorically.

Putin’s assessment that Ukraine’s attack in Kursk is designed to show Western supporters that Kyiv can still muster major military operations while trying to gain a bargaining chip ahead of possible ceasefire talks echoes the consensus of many analysts.

But his comments regarding Ukraine’s alleged indiscriminate strikes on civilians and civilian infrastructure will undoubtedly be ridiculed in Kyiv and the West.

More than 100,000 Russian citizens have been forced to flee their homes amid widespread regional evacuations since last Tuesday, while 12 civilians are said to have died. 

By contrast, the Kremlin chief’s so-called ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine has killed thousands of civilians and driven millions from their homes. 

Meanwhile, security officials in Kyiv told The Times they were concerned about the scale of the anticipated Russian response to the offensive in Kursk.

‘Russia will likely feel compelled to deliver a strong response, something substantial, to show the world it is powerful,’ the unnamed source said.

‘It could involve hundreds of air targets, utilising sophisticated weapons such as cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and strike drones… This could pose a significant challenge for our air defence, but I believe we can stop them.’

Early this morning, Ukraine launched a second, smaller offensive, sending yet more ground units supported by a contingent of tanks into the Belgorod region as fighting continued in Kursk. 

Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov issued an evacuation alert to thousands of Russians living in the Krasnoyaruzhsky district around 5am this morning amid reports that tanks and troops were massing along the Ukrainian border.

Hours later, Russian news site Mash reported that a Ukrainian ‘sabotage group supported by at least four tanks’ breached the border and entered the town of Kolotilovka in Belgorod, roughly 25 miles south of Sudzha in Kursk that Kyiv‘s forces are fighting to encircle. 

The incursion in Belgorod comes a day after President Volodymyr Zelensky finally acknowledged his forces were behind the attacks on Russian soil, where they are seeking to ‘restore justice’. 

Fears of a nuclear disaster were also heightened yesterday when a fire broke out in a cooling tower at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (NPP), with Moscow and Kyiv trading blame – though the fire was extinguished late last night. 

This morning’s attack in Belgorod comes just days after Kyiv’s forces staged their biggest incursion into sovereign Russian territory since the start of the 2022 war. 

Kyiv’s forces rammed through the Russian border early on Tuesday and swept across some Western parts of Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukraine has deployed thousands of troops to the surprise operation, according to security officials, in an attempt to seize the battlefield initiative after months of slow Russian advances across the east.

‘The aim is to stretch the positions of the enemy, to inflict maximum losses and to destabilise the situation in Russia as they are unable to protect their own border,’ the security official said on condition of anonymity.

They also said that Ukraine had deployed ‘a lot more’ than 1,000 troops into Kursk, claiming that estimate by Russia’s defence ministry was way off. 

The assault appeared to catch the Kremlin off guard, with Russia’s army commanders hurriedly deploying reserve troops, tanks, aviation, artillery and drones in a bid to quash it.

But the army on Sunday appeared to concede that Ukraine had been able to penetrate its territory by up to 20 miles in places.

In a daily briefing on the situation in the western Kursk region, Russia’s defence ministry said it had ‘foiled attempts’ by Ukraine’s forces to ‘break through deep into Russian territory’ using armoured vehicles.

But it said some of those forces were near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, some 17 and 20 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.

In the neighbouring Belgorod region to the south, regional governor Gladkov this morning said evacuations had begun from the Krasnoyaruzhsky District due to ‘enemy activity on the border’ that was a ‘threat’.

‘It is an alarming morning… I am sure that our servicemen will do everything to cope with the threat that has arisen,’ Gladkov said. 

‘But in order to safeguard lives we are starting to move people who live in the Krasnoyaruzhsky district to safer places.’

The Kremlin has now imposed a sweeping security regime in the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk border regions while Russian ally Belarus said it was also bolstering its troop numbers at its border.

But Russian troops fighting the invasion on the ground have also had to contend with intermittent drone and missile strikes from Ukraine. 

Russia destroyed five drones over Belgorod overnight, 11 over Kursk and two over Voronezh, according to Russia’s defence ministry which said it was repelling Ukrainian attacks inside Russia. 

Those foiled strikes came after a Ukrainian missile strike was said to have slaughtered hundreds of Russian troops in the Rylsky district of Kursk last week. 

Russian forces, which have a vast numerical supremacy and control 18% of Ukrainian territory, have been advancing this year along the 620-mile front after the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive to make any major gains.

The Ukrainian attack on Kursk and now Belgorod has therefore prompted some in Moscow to question why Ukraine was able to pierce the border so easily after more than two years of the most intense land war in Europe since World War Two.

Russian war bloggers said Ukrainian forces in Kursk were trying to encircle Sudzha, where Russian natural gas flows into Ukraine, while major battles were underway near Korenevo, about 14 miles from the border.

Russia said a missile attack on Kursk over the weekend had injured 13 people.

Though the United States said it had not been told of the Ukrainian operation before it was unleashed, there were signs in Moscow that the attack would provoke a response from Russia

‘We have no doubt that the organisers and perpetrators of these crimes, including their foreign curators, will bear responsibility for them,’ said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

‘A tough response from the Russian Armed Forces will not take long.’  

Meanwhile, Moscow and Kyiv yesterday accused each other of starting a fire on the grounds of Europe’s largest and now Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog, which has a presence at the vast six-reactor facility, said its experts had seen strong, dark smoke coming from the northern area of the plant in southern Ukraine following multiple explosions.

‘These reckless attacks endanger nuclear safety at the plant and increase the risk of a nuclear accident. They must stop now,’ IAEA chief Rafael Grossi warned in a separate statement, without attributing blame for the attack.

Russian state news agencies, TASS and RIA, cited the country’s nuclear energy company Rosatom as saying the main fire was extinguished shortly before midnight on Sunday.

RIA, citing Rosatom, said a Ukrainian drone attack started the fire at the cooling tower, without providing evidence.

Ukraine’s nuclear power company Energoatom said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that one of the cooling towers and other equipment were damaged.

Grossi said the agency requested ‘immediate access’ to the cooling tower to assess the damage, but there was no immediate response from Moscow or Kyiv to Grossi’s statement.

Russia captured the plant from Ukraine shortly after launching its full-scale invasion on its smaller neighbour in 2022, an attack described by Moscow as a ‘special operation’. 

The plant’s six nuclear reactors are in cold shutdown to prevent a nuclear disaster.