Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of a “major provocation” after Moscow said it was battling a major cross-border attack on the southwestern Kursk region.
Alexey Smirnov, the region’s acting governor, said he had introduced a state of emergency amid two days of fierce fighting.
The Ministry of Health said 31 civilians, including six children, had been injured on Wednesday. Smirnov said the day before that five people had been killed as Ukrainian troops backed by tanks and armoured vehicles breached the border.
Russia did not provide any information on military casualties.
“The Kyiv regime has launched another major provocation,” Putin told Russian government officials on Wednesday, referring to the attack in the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine’s northern Sumy region.
Ukraine has not commented directly on the attack, but Russia’s Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian forces were pushing to the northwest of the border town of Sudzha, 530km (330 miles) southwest of Moscow.
Russia said it used air and artillery firepower to repel the attack throughout Wednesday, after earlier rushing reinforcements to the region.
Witnesses interviewed on Russian television said they had fled border areas in cars under drone fire. A priest in Sudzha, Evgeny Shestopalov, said in a video shared by Russian media, that the town of about 5,000 people was “on fire” and that residents unable to evacuate had taken shelter in his church.
The extent of the damage and the depth of the Ukrainian advance remains unclear, however.
Several reports from Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers suggested the fighters had gained several kilometres.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, DC-based think tank, said in its August 7 update that geolocated footage suggested Ukraine may have advanced as far as 10km (6.2 miles) inside Russia. It said the troops appeared to be trying to advance along the Sudzha-Korenovo highway.
At the meeting with Putin, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, said Russian forces had halted an attack by as many as 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers – more than three times the figure that the Defence Ministry had stated as involved on Tuesday – and would push them back to the border.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made no reference to the events in Kursk in his nightly video address, while the General Staff did not mention it in its daily battlefield update. In a late evening report, it said fighting had intensified in the Sumy region, where authorities have evacuated about 6,000 people.
The General Staff said Russian forces had deployed aircraft, helicopters and heavy weapons in the area, “but made no headway and suffered significant losses”.
In Washington, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States was seeking an understanding from Ukraine on the incursion, and said it had had no advance knowledge of it.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stressed the US had not changed its policy on Ukraine’s use of US-supplied weaponry, which could be used only “to target imminent threats just across the border”.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said of the Kremlin: “It is a little bit rich, them calling it a provocation, given Russia violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
The battles around Sudzha come as Russia announces advances along the front line in Ukraine’s east and claims to have taken 420 square kilometres (162 square miles) of territory from Ukrainian forces since June 14.
Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Pro-Kyiv forces, including units of Russians fighting on Ukraine’s side, such as the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion, have made several brief incursions into Russia since then.