Ukraine said Friday its incursion into Russian territory was aimed at forcing Russia to negotiate on “fair” terms, as Moscow’s troops announced new gains in eastern Ukraine.
Two and a half years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s troops last week launched a major counter-offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, sending more than 120,000 people fleeing.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky’s aide Mykhailo Podolyak said on Friday that Ukraine wanted to negotiate “on our own terms.”
“We have absolutely no plans to beg: ‘Please, sit down to negotiate’, he wrote on X.
“Instead, we have proven, effective means of coercion. In addition to economic and diplomatic ones... we need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia.
“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process.”
Ukraine has ruled out any talks with Russia if Russian troops do not leave its territory.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia would declare a ceasefire only if Kyiv withdraws from the four regions that Russia claims to have annexed but only partially controls -- Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Ukraine meanwhile claims to have seized over 1,100 square kilometers of Russian territory, in the biggest attack by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II.
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“I was very scared, very scared,” Nina Golinyaeva, a former resident of the border town of Sudzha, told AFP at an evacuation centre in Kursk city, the regional capital.
“Shells were flying from all sides, helicopters, planes, fighter jets were flying over the house,” she said, recounting a dramatic night-time escape amid the fighting.
“We don’t know what to do. We cry day and night, every day. We don’t know what we are going to do,” said 70-year-old Zinaida Tarasyuk, another evacuee collecting humanitarian aid.
“We left everything,” she added.
Kyiv claims to have taken control of more than 80 settlements in the lightning incursion.
The governor of the Kursk region said on Monday that Ukraine had seized 28 settlements.
Enemy rapidly approaching
The attack has been a morale boost for Ukraine, where many say it is giving Russian civilians a taste of what Ukrainians have been facing on a daily basis since the start of Russia’s full-scale assault in February 2022.
But the incursion appears to have had little impact on the larger battles raging in Russian-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine.
The Russian defence ministry on Friday said its troops had captured another village near the Ukrainian-held logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
The head of Pokrovsk’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, has urged people to evacuate.
“The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said on Telegram.
On the other side of the front line, Russian-installed authorities said at least seven people were injured by a Ukrainian strike on a supermarket in the Russian-held city of Donetsk.
In Kursk region, a pro-Kremlin organisation said two of its employees helping evacuations were killed by a strike on their car.
Russia’s defence ministry also said it had repelled a night-time attack using 12 US-made missiles on the landmark Crimea bridge built on the orders of President Vladimir Putin after Moscow annexed the peninsula.
Kyiv has launched multiple attacks and attempted attacks on the Kerch Bridge since Moscow began its military offensive.
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