Moscow on Saturday launched an “anti-terrorist operation” in three border regions with Ukraine to prevent Kiev’s biggest cross-border attack in the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
According to independent analysts, Ukrainian military troops crossed the border into Russia’s western Kursk region on Tuesday morning and advanced several kilometres.
Russia has deployed additional troops and equipment, including tanks, rocket launchers and aviation units, to stop the advancing troops.
Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee said late Friday that it was “launching an anti-terrorist operation in Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions … to ensure the safety of civilians and suppress the threat of terrorist acts carried out by enemy subversive groups.”
Under Russian law, security forces and the military are granted broad emergency powers during “counter-terrorism” operations.
Movement is restricted, vehicles may be impounded, phone calls monitored, areas declared containment zones, checkpoints set up, and security increased at key infrastructure sites.
The Anti-Terrorism Committee said Ukraine had made “an unprecedented attempt to destabilize the situation in a number of regions of our country.”
It described Ukraine’s incursion as a “terrorist attack” and said Kiev’s troops had injured civilians and destroyed residential buildings.
Ukrainian leaders have remained tight-lipped about the operation, and the United States, Kiev’s closest ally, has said it was not informed of the plan in advance.
But President Volodymyr Zelensky, touting his troops’ early successes, said earlier this week that Russia should “feel” the consequences of the large-scale attack it launched against Ukraine since February 2022.
Russia’s Defence Ministry on Saturday published footage of tank crews firing on Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region and air strikes overnight, while on Friday it said it had deployed more units to the border region.
It also said it had shot down 26 Ukrainian drones that were trying to attack the region overnight.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
