Over 500 locals unaccounted for in formerly occupied Kursk region

Alexander Khinshtein, the acting governor of Russia’s southwestern Kursk region, said on Saturday that the whereabouts of 576 residents who had been registered as missing since the capture of the region by the Ukrainian military in August remained unknown.

Over 2,200 people were listed as having lost touch with relatives since records began in February. Of those, 1,290 have now been located, while the regional authorities know the “approximate location” of another 421 people who had also been recorded as missing, Khinshtein said. Four minors are among those still unaccounted for.

Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion into the Kursk region in August 2024, with the Russian Defence Ministry only reporting that all Ukrainian units had been expelled from the region on 25 May. At the same time, Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian army had begun to create a “security zone” along the border between the two countries, which experts were quick to dismiss as “nonsense”, with fears mounting that this is merely a prelude to a Russian summer offensive.

Meanwhile, authorities in the Sumy region of Ukraine, across the border from the Kursk region, announced on Saturday the mandatory evacuation of 11 more settlements close to Russia due to “the threat to the life of the civilian population from shelling”. Some 213 settlements in the region have already been subject to mandatory evacuation.