Russia on Saturday said that it had evacuated tens of thousands of people from its border region and launched a “counter-terror operation” as it struggled to contain a major Ukrainian incursion.
At the same time, Moscow said that the fighting in Russia’s western Kursk region was endangering a nuclear power plant.
Ukrainian units stormed across the border on Tuesday morning in what is the largest and most successful offensive by Kyiv in the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
Photo: Reuters
Its troops have advanced several kilometers, forcing Russia’s army to rush in reserves and extra equipment — although neither side has given precise details on the forces committed.
Local officials detailed the scale of civilian evacuations from towns and villages close to the combat zone.
“More than 76,000 people have been temporarily relocated to safe places,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted an official from the regional emergency situations ministry telling a briefing on Saturday.
Emergency aid has been ferried into the border area and extra trains to Moscow have been arranged for people fleeing the fighting.
“The war has come to us,” said one woman — who declined to give her name — after arriving at a Moscow train station on Friday.
However, late on Saturday air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
Agence France-Presse journalists said they saw least two flashes in the night sky, and the Ukrainian Air Force said five other regions were being attacked by drones.
Kyiv has maintained strict operational silence on the offensive and for several days Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made only oblique references to the fighting there.
However, in an address on Saturday evening, Zelenskiy referred to Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky’s briefings “on the front line and our actions and pushing the war into the aggressor’s territory.”
Thanking the soldiers involved, he added: “Ukraine is proving that it can really bring justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed — pressure on the aggressor.”
Russia’s army on Saturday said it was still fighting the Ukrainian incursion for a fifth day.
It said Kyiv’s forces had initially crossed the border with about 1,000 troops, 20 armored vehicles and 11 tanks, although it said on Saturday that it had destroyed five times that much military hardware so far.
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