Ukraine is catching up with Russia on weekly territorial gains made throughout the war, as its forces advance deeper into the Kursk region, according to figures from Ukraine’s army chief.
Kyiv’s military has seized more territory in the Kursk region in days than Russia has captured in Ukraine since the beginning of the year, according to analysis by Russian investigative site Agentstvo. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander-in chief, said the area of military operations in the Kursk region had exceeded 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) by Monday.
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Ukraine launched its armored assault into Kursk on August 6, seemingly catching Russia off-guard. Thousands of residents have been evacuated from the region, where Moscow has declared a federal emergency. Russia’s military has been forced to scramble to deploy additional resources to the region, diverting manpower away from the war it started in Ukraine in February 2022.
In roughly 24 hours, Ukraine’s forces overwhelmed two major lines of fortifications in the Kursk region that took Russia over two-and-a-half years and more than $170 million to build, according to Agentstvo.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that his forces have now taken control of 74 settlements in Kursk, which borders Ukraine’s Sumy region, and that they are still advancing.
“Despite difficult and intense battles, our forces continue to advance in the Kursk region, and our state’s ‘exchange fund’ is growing. Seventy-four settlements are under Ukrainian control,” Zelensky said in a video address to the nation.
“Everything is being executed according to the plan,” Syrskyi told the Ukrainian leader when asked to develop the next key steps in the Kursk incursion.
On Tuesday, Agentstvo reported that, if Syrskyi’s claims are accurate, territory captured by Ukraine in a week in Kursk is just 131 square kilometers (50 square miles) less than what Russia has claimed to have seized since the beginning of its latest offensive, which began on October 10, 2023.
Ukraine has deployed its most elite units to the Kursk region, including from the Pokrovsk, Toretsk, and Chasiv Yar fronts, wrote Rob Lee, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
These are “the most difficult parts of the front line” in Ukraine and so “it is pretty clear that Ukraine is not pursuing limited objectives in its Kursk operation,” Lee said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Two days into the incursion, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Ukraine hopes the operation would boost Kyiv’s position in potential future negotiations with Russia. Ukraine’s advances on Russian territory will also “scare” Russians and worsen their attitude toward the Russian leader, Podolyak added.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the armored assault into Russia has “created a real dilemma” for Putin: “That’s all I’m going to say about it while it’s active.”
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said the U.S. “had nothing to do with this.”
“We have no involvement. We’ll continue to have conversations with the Ukrainians about their approach, but it is really for them to speak to,” she told reporters.
Washington has said that Ukraine’s Kursk incursion is consistent with U.S. policy on the use of its weapons on Russian soil.
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