Zelensky confirms Ukrainian military presence in Russia’s Belgorod region for first time

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed for the first time on Monday that Ukrainian forces were operating in Russia’s Belgorod region as part of an operation designed to shield Ukraine’s border from Russian attacks.

In his nightly video address to Ukrainians, Zelensky said that Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi had briefed him on the Ukrainian military’s “active operations in the border areas on enemy territory” in Belgorod, where it launched a cross-border offensive in March, as well as in the neighbouring Kursk region, where the AFU still holds a small amount of territory that it captured in its incursion into Russia in August.

“This is just — war must return to where it came from”, Zelensky said, adding that the goal of the operation was to “protect our land and our communities” just across the border in Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions.

Both regions have been subject to frequent Russian airstrikes, with a drone strike on the city of Kharkiv on Thursday leaving five people dead.

Despite Russian forces now having recaptured most of the territory seized by the AFU in the Kursk region last year, Zelensky stressed that the “bravery and resilience” of Ukrainian troops during their seven-month-long incursion on Russian soil had nevertheless helped to “ease the pressure on other parts of the front”, including in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region where much of the fiercest fighting is.

Russia’s Defence Ministry first reported a Ukrainian offensive in Belgorod on 18 March, accusing the AFU of timing its assault on border villages to “create a negative backdrop” to a phone call between Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump later that day.

While the Defence Ministry said Russian forces had halted the Ukrainian offensive and that the AFU had suffered “significant losses”, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced just days later that residents of the region’s Krasnoyaruzhsky district along the border were being evacuated in view of what he described as a “complex” situation in the area.