Border breach

Moscow says fighting ongoing as troops repel Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region

Read the latest updates on the situation here.

On Tuesday morning, Russian pro-war social media groups and Telegram channels from Russia’s Kursk region began reporting that clashes had broken out in several areas along the Russian-Ukrainian border. The pro-war Telegram channel Two Majors wrote that a small group of Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border at a “narrow section of the front” and advanced several hundred meters into Russian territory.

At around 10:00 a.m., Kursk Governor Alexey Smirnov said he’d received information from the region’s Sudzhansky and Korenovsky districts that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) were attempting to force their way across the border. According to him, members of the FSB’s border service and the Russian army “prevented the border breach.”

The Telegram channel Mash reported that during the night, a Ukrainian sabotage group of about 100 people, equipped with heavy machinery and supported by artillery and drones, tried to cross into Russian territory in the Sudzhansky district. According to Mash, the fighting is ongoing with Ukrainian soldiers splitting into small groups and dispersing “in the wooded areas of the Shostka district of [Ukraine’s] Sumy region.” The channel said that at least 20 AFU soldiers have already been killed and another 50 injured in the fighting.

Two Majors asserted that Ukrainian troops — infantry and armored vehicles — continue to move toward Kurilovka and Goncharovka near Sudzha in the Kursk region and that Russian troops destroyed two Ukrainian tanks.

Pro-Kremlin “war correspondents” wrote that the Russian army is shelling concentrations of Ukrainian troops in Ukraine’s Sumy region, which borders the Kursk region. Oleksiy Drozdenko, the head of the Sumy region military administration, urged locals to “not ignore air raid signals in these times, take action, and remain in safe places.”

Later on Tuesday, the FSB stated that the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out an “armed provocation” on the Russian border, including shelling border settlements in the Kursk region. According to the FSB press release, the agency’s border guards worked with Russian military units to “repel the armed aggression.”

At around 5:00 p.m. Moscow time, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that on the morning of August 6, up to 300 AFU servicemen, supported by 11 tanks and more than 20 armored combat vehicles, attacked Russian border guard positions near the settlements of Nikolaevo-Darino and Oleshnya in Russia’s Kursk region. The ministry stated that Russian forces continue to repel the attacks and have already destroyed 16 Ukrainian armored vehicles.

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Later in the evening, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Ukrainian detachment attempting to break through into the Kursk region had retreated after suffering losses. Shortly thereafter, the ministry edited the message, removing the words about the retreat. Authorities in the Kursk region stated that the fighting continues and that the situation at the border is “tense,” but under control. Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, called Russian statements about the situation at the border being under control false. “Russia does not control the border,” he said.

As of this article’s publication, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate had not commented on the reports.

Since the start of the full-scale war, formations of Russians who are fighting on the side of Ukraine and connected to Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate have repeatedly tried to breach the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Kursk and Belgorod regions.