Ukraine sees Kursk as a bargaining chip for peace negotiations

After the major ground offensive in Russian territory, the Ukrainian armed forces are holding dozens of towns there. Kiev also explains what it intends to do with them. Meanwhile, evacuations are continuing.

Ukraine sees its conquests in the Russian Kursk region as nothing more than a bargaining chip for peace negotiations. Unlike Russia, Ukraine does not want to seize foreign territory, said Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhij Tychyj. “Ukraine is not interested in conquering territory in the Kursk region. We want to protect the lives of our people.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Telegram: “Ukraine has 74 settlements under its control.” The figures cannot be independently verified. That would be more than double the number of locations that Russia had recently stated.

Tychyj justified the operation, which has now lasted eight days, by saying that it was intended to prevent Russian attacks on the neighboring Ukrainian region of Sumy. In addition, Russian logistics were to be disrupted in order to prevent Moscow from moving additional troops into the eastern Ukrainian combat zone of Donetsk.

“The sooner Russia agrees to restore a just peace, (…) the sooner the attacks by the Ukrainian defense forces on Russian territory will stop,” Tychyj said, according to Ukrainian media. The Ukrainian army is a civilized armed force and adheres to the rules of warfare and international humanitarian law. “The targets of the Ukrainian armed forces are the soldiers.”

Zelensky wrote: “Despite difficult, intense fighting, our forces continue to advance in the Kursk region.” More and more Russian soldiers are being captured to use them as bargaining chips for the next prisoner exchange with Russia. The next steps are being prepared, said the president. He did not give any details. He had previously said that Russia had brought the war to Ukraine and should now experience for itself what that means. The goal is to achieve a just peace as quickly as possible.

The Ukrainian army has been attacking the Russian region of Kursk with a large-scale ground offensive since August 6. The Ukrainian project DeepState sees fewer towns under Kyiv’s control than Zelensky – namely around 44 towns. Russian independent media reported around 30 towns.

After almost two and a half years of defending against the Russian invasion, Ukraine has for the first time undertaken a large-scale ground operation on enemy territory by advancing across the border. The offensive has been underway since last Tuesday, although the military situation remains unclear. Russian military observers assume that the Russian armed forces will become better organized after the initial surprise and stop the Ukrainian advance.

“The operation to destroy units of the Ukrainian armed forces is continuing,” the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced. Several attempts by Ukrainians to penetrate into Russia through other sections of the border have been repelled. According to Ukrainian commander-in-chief Olexander Syrskij, Ukraine has control over around 1,000 square kilometers in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday once again ordered the Ukrainian forces to be expelled from the country. He expressly rejected negotiations with Ukraine.

According to authorities, around 120,000 people have fled or been brought to safety from the districts in the Kursk region affected by the fighting. Evacuation was being prepared for another district. “To date, there has been no evacuation in our district. Everyone left of their own accord, no one stopped them. Today we are collecting data on who still needs to be evacuated,” wrote the head of the Bolshesoldatsky district administration, Vladimir Zaitsev, on Telegram. Unlike the districts in the Kursk region that have been evacuated so far, this district is not in the immediate vicinity of the Ukrainian-Russian border, but further inland.

According to authorities, the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy was the target of a Russian missile attack during the night. The military administration of the Sumy region said that infrastructure objects were hit. The Ukrainian side does not provide any information about possible hits on military targets. The Ukrainian troops, which have been operating in Russia for more than a week, are supplied via Sumy.

The Kursk authorities also want to bring refugees to a Russian-occupied area in Ukraine. The acting governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, said on Telegram that he had spoken to the governor of the Zaporizhia region about this solution. His counterpart, Yevgeny Balitsky, had suggested using the sanatoriums and boarding houses on the Sea of ​​Azov to accommodate the evacuees. “In the coming days, we will put together the first transports to bring people to the emergency shelters in the Zaporizhia region.”

Russia annexed the Zaporizhia region, which belongs to Ukraine, in the autumn of 2022 and had already appointed the Ukrainian Balizki as a Moscow-loyal governor. Moscow does not fully control the area, but had mainly occupied the access to the Sea of ​​Azov, where there are still sanatoriums today. The refugees are now to be accommodated there.