Russian commander says counterattack to Ukraine incursion starts

Moscow’s forces claim to have started an offensive to dislodge Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region of Russia, their first significant effort in more than five weeks since the start of Kyiv’s incursion.

A Russian brigade began advancing Tuesday, with fighting continuing Wednesday, Apti Alaudinov, a military commander, told state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper.

Russian military bloggers also wrote about an offensive in the region, though it remained unclear whether the troops doing the fighting were deployed from the front in eastern Ukraine, or from elsewhere inside Russia. A few bloggers, alongside Rossiiskaya Gazeta, said some of the soldiers were from the 155th Marine Brigade, which is based in Vladivostok in the Far East, but has in the past fought in the war on Ukraine.

Neither the Russian Defense Ministry nor Ukrainian officials have confirmed that a counteroffensive is under way.

Russia recaptured at least two localities, said the Telegram channel Rybar, which has more than 1 million subscribers.

“In Kursk, our people went on a counteroffensive with fresh forces yesterday,” said Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. “So far it has been very successful, with several villages liberated and prisoners taken. The resistance was weak — the Ukrainians did not have a continuous front line there.”

Ukraine’s incursion is the first foreign military offensive inside Russia since World War II. The operation caught the Kremlin off guard and prompted tens of thousands to flee their homes in the region. Ukraine said at the end of last month it controlled almost 1,300 square kilometers (about 500 square miles) of Russian territory, which Russia never confirmed.

Analysts at DeepState, a map service maintained in cooperation with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said that the situation had worsened on Ukraine’s left flank in Kursk after Russian forces crossed the Seym River with armored vehicles. Ukrainian forces had previously attacked bridges on the Seym in the Glushkov district of Kursk to stop Russia’s army from reinforcing its troops and delivering ammunition supplies.

Despite Ukraine’s cross-border incursion, Russia has continued its offensive elsewhere along the front line, advancing in the eastern Donetsk region toward the city of Pokrovsk, an important logistics hub for Ukrainian forces.