President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukrainian forces control territory with an area of over 1,250 square km and 92 settlements in Russia's Kursk region, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
He called on Kiev's allies to allow the use of Western weapons for strikes inside Russia and added that the lack of such permission was the main reason Ukraine could not stop the advance of Moscow's troops on the eastern front.
"The naïve, illusory concept of the so-called red lines with regard to Russia, which dominated the assessments of the war of some of our partners, crumbled to dust in recent days somewhere around Suja," Zelensky said in an address to representatives of Ukraine's diplomatic missions abroad, referring to the Russian border town in the Kursk region, currently under Ukrainian control.
Ukrainian forces, he added in what was published in "Telegram" statement, control 92 settlements in the Kursk region.
"If our partners had lifted these restrictions on the use of weapons on the territory of Russia, we would not have had to physically enter the Kursk region," Zelensky said and emphasized the need to protect border Ukrainian settlements.
The Ukrainian leader pointed out that, in addition, these restrictions prevent Kiev from repelling the Russian advance in the regions of the strategic city of Pokrovsk and Toretsk.
The two cities are the epicenter of some of the fiercest fighting on the front in recent times.