Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to liberate the Kursk region by October 1, rbc.ua reported, citing intelligence sources.
On August 6, the Ukrainian army carried out a surprise invasion of Russia's Kursk region and captured dozens of settlements. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced yesterday that Ukrainian forces control a territory with an area of over 1,250 square kilometers and 92 settlements in the Kursk region. 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.
Putin has ordered the Russian forces to push out the Ukrainian occupiers by October 1, but with the express clarification that this should not be at the expense of the fighting in Donbass. It is believed that the Kremlin does not want to transfer its troops from eastern Ukraine to Kursk.
The Russian army is advancing slowly but methodically in Donbass, and more specifically in the Toretsk and Pokrov directions of the front.
„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. The invasion of Ukrainian forces into Russia was a huge humiliation for Vladimir Putin, who does not have enough forces to defend his own territory. According to Kiev, since the beginning of the full-scale war, more than 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded at the front.
Ukrainian local authorities yesterday issued an order for the mandatory evacuation of families with children from the city of Pokrovsk, where 53,000 people still live, the Associated Press reported. According to the authorities, Russian forces are now advancing so quickly that it is imperative that families leave the city and other settlements in nearby areas. Russian troops have been advancing on Pokrovsk for months, and last week were about 10 kilometers from the city's outskirts.