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After several days of fighting in southwestern Russia, both sides are claiming successes. The battles are still being waged.
Russia is pushing back against Ukraine’s largest assault into Russian territory since the start of the war, sending troop reinforcements, establishing strict security measures in border areas and conducting airstrikes, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. One of the strikes on Ukrainian troops involved a thermobaric missile that causes a blast wave and suffocates those in its path, the ministry said.
But even as Russia has halted the quick advances made by Ukrainian troops who launched a surprise cross-border attack five days ago into the southwestern region of Kursk, Ukrainian forces seem to be holding ground. They claimed on Saturday to have captured a small village in the neighboring Belgorod region, and analysts say their forces control most of the Kursk town of Sudzha, about six miles from the border.
Pasi Paroinen, an analyst from the Black Bird Group, a Finland-based organization that analyzes satellite imagery and social media content from the battlefield, said in an interview that evidence suggested that Moscow had been able to stall the major advances in Russian territory late in the week.
“We’re now entering the phase where the easy gains have been made,” he said of Ukraine’s initial advance. “This phase, for the first three days, saw the most rapid movement,” he added. “And yesterday, I think, we started to see the effects of the Russian response.”
What all of this means for Ukraine is not yet clear. In the third year of a war that has seemed largely frozen along a 600-mile front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, the decision by Ukrainian forces to cross the border into Russia apparently surprised not just Russia, but also the United States, other Western partners and analysts who spend their days following the war’s troop movements.
Some have speculated that Ukraine hopes to draw Russian troops away from the front lines in Ukraine, giving battle-weary Ukrainian troops a needed rest, although analysts say that has not happened.
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