Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed for the first time in his nighly address Monday that Ukrainian troops were also fighting in Russia’s Belgorod province. File Photo by Ole Berg-Rusten/EPA-EFE
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had opened a new front in Russia’s Belgorod Province and were now fighting there, as well as in Kursk, defending the incursions as an “absolutely just” response to Russian aggression.
Zelensky made the comments following a briefing from Ukraine Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on the situation at the front, including “our presence in the Kursk and Belgorod regions,” saying the 225th Assault Regiment had been engaged in “active operations in Belgorod” for several days.
“We continue to carry out active operations in the border areas on enemy territory, and that is absolutely just — war must return to where it came from. The main objective remains the same: to protect our land and our communities in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions as much as possible from the Russian occupiers.
“The commander-in-chief reported on the activity of our units along the borderline, in the so-called ‘gray zone,’ and directly on enemy territory,” said Zelensky who stressed that these operations had also succeeded in easing the pressure on other parts of the front, particularly in the Donetsk region.
“It is absolutely crucial to keep destroying Russian equipment and all logistics used by the occupiers all along the front,” he added.
The Institute for the Study of War said in an update Monday that geolocated footage showed Russian forces had made advances in the far northwest corner of Bolgorod province, close to the border with Kursk and Ukraine’s Sumy province.
However, it said it was unable to confirm reports by Russian military bloggers that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces out of the settlements of Demidovka and Popovka, about 65 miles northwest of Belgorod city, saying at least one other source had reported Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in Demidovka.
Reports that Ukrainian forces had crossed the border emerged three weeks ago with U.S. European Command’s, General Christopher Cavoli, confirming the counteroffensive to Congress on Thursday, saying they were “holding good defensive terrain” in the province.
Zelensky’s statement was the first time Kyiv had acknowledged its troops were fighting in Belgorod, although it had been waging a largely aerial war on the region for the past eight months, ever since it launched its incursion into the neighboring Kursk region, to the north in early August.
Belgorod authorities began the evacuation of more than 14,000 people on Aug. 12 in the region’s Krasnoyaruzhsky District due to “alarming” maneuvers by Ukrainian armed forces on the border nearby. Two days later, the region declared a state of emergency.
