Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that he would “take care of the Ukrainian bandits," referring to Ukrainian soldiers who have been waging an offensive in Russia's border Kursk region since early last month, while expressing his satisfaction that this operation had failed to halt the Russian advance in Eastern Ukraine, France Press reported, quoted by BTA.
„We need to take care of these bandits who have infiltrated the territory of Russia, in the Kursk region, and who are trying to destabilize the situation in the border territories as a whole,” Putin said at a meeting with schoolchildren.
These sharp comments are in contrast to the usual statements of representatives of the Russian authorities, who have so far tried to play down the offensive of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, which began on August 6, according to AFP.
Nevertheless, Putin noted that Ukraine “has not achieved the main task it set itself: to stop the (Russian) offensive in Donbas”.
The Ukrainian army surprised Russian forces in the Kursk region, quickly capturing hundreds of square kilometers and dozens of settlements before being stopped.
Ukrainian authorities say one of the goals of this operation was to get Russia to redirect forces currently advancing in eastern Ukraine to that region.
This venture appears to have failed as the Russian army accelerated its advance eastward, capturing new settlements almost daily, and is now less than 10 kilometers from the city of Pokrovsk, a major logistics hub.
In Putin's words, Russian troops are now advancing several square kilometers with each attack, not several hundred meters as before. “ We have not seen such a pace of offensive actions in Donbas for a long time,”, he noted.
As a result of the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region, at least 31 civilians were killed and more than 140 people were injured, and according to Russian authorities, more than 130,000 people fled the fighting.
Putin admitted that residents of the Kursk region and other Russian regions bordering Ukraine, which are regularly shelled, “are going through severe trials”.