Ukraine and its cross-border attack on Russia: What we know

A Ukrainian serviceman drives a self-propelled howitzer 2S1 Gvozdika in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia, on August 13, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s army launched a surprise offensive into Russia last Tuesday, capturing over two dozen villages in the biggest cross-border assault on the country since World War II.

The attack comes almost two and a half years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and after months of deadlocked warfare on the frontlines.

Here is a rundown of what we know, one week on from the incursion:

How did it start?

The attack began just after sunrise on August 6 at about 5:30 am local time (0230 GMT), according to the head of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov.

Up to 1,000 soldiers crossed into Russia’s Kursk region near the town of Sudzha, accompanied by at least 11 tanks and more than 20 armoured vehicles, according to Russia’s estimates.

A Ukrainian official told AFP “thousands” of soldiers were involved in the attack.

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“They didn’t protect the border,” a Ukrainian serviceman who identified himself as Ruzhyk told AFP.

“They only had anti-personnel mines scattered around trees at the side of the road, and a few mines that they managed to quickly throw along the highways,” he said.

About an hour after the assault began, the governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, shared images of destruction from the Russian border town of Sudzha on Telegram.

He said the town had been shelled and that several people were wounded, posting images of homes reduced to rubble.

The Russian defence ministry admitted Ukraine had broken through into the region in a statement published more than 11 hours after the assault began.

It said Russian forces including border patrol units were “repelling the attacks and inflicting fire damage on the enemy”.

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What’s happening in the Kursk region?

At least 12 civilians have been killed and 121 others injured by the fighting, according to Kursk regional governor Smirnov.

Russian state media has aired few images from the border region, as the Kremlin seeks to downplay the impact of the war on its civilians.

But as of Monday, 121,000 people had left or been evacuated, Smirnov said. The governor of the neighbouring Belgorod region also announced evacuations from one border district.

Emergency aid has been ferried into the border area and extra trains to the capital Moscow have been put on for people fleeing the fighting.

A local Russian TV station broadcast images from the centre of Sudzha showing destroyed buildings, debris strewn across streets and large craters in the ground from artillery strikes.

Several Russian media outlets shared a video purporting to show residents who had fled from the town appealing to Putin for help, with many warning that family members had been unable to evacuate.

“In a few hours our town was turned into ruins … Our relatives are left behind, we can’t call them, there is no communication. Please help us get our land back,” one resident said in the video.

A priest in the town, Evgeny Shestopalov, said in a video shared by Russian media on August 7 that Sudzha was “on fire” and that residents unable to evacuate were sheltering at his church.

Why is Sudzha important?

The small town of about 5,000 people is home to the Sudzha metering station, the last major transit point for Russian pipeline gas still heading to Europe via Ukraine.

It is by far the largest town Ukraine has been battling to control in the incursion.

About 14.65 billion cubic metres of gas were transported through Sudzha in 2023, a little under half Russia’s gas exports to Europe, according to the RBC Ukraine news outlet.

While Europe has drastically cut its dependence on Russian pipeline gas since the invasion, Russia has kept supplying gas via Sudzha under a five-year agreement it signed with Kyiv at the end of 2019.

Ukraine has said it will not renew the transit agreement when it expires at the end of 2024.

But there are concerns Russian state-run energy giant Gazprom could use the fighting as an excuse to halt gas exports via Sudzha prematurely.

Videos from August 9 showed Ukrainian soldiers carrying assault rifles and flags in front of a Gazprom facility in the vicinity of the town.

How much does Ukraine control?

Ukrainian troops had advanced over an area of at least 800 square kilometres (308 square miles) of territory as of Monday, according to an AFP analysis of data provided by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The head of Ukraine’s military said Monday that Kyiv held around 1,000 square kilometres and was continuing offensive operations.

Russia has admitted Ukrainian units have driven deep into the country, saying on Sunday they had reached as far as 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border.

At least 28 villages are now under Ukraine’s control, Smirnov reported on Monday.

Kyiv also occupied the western part of Sudzha, with the central and eastern parts contested “grey zones”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported in an assessment on Monday.

Ukraine made its biggest gains in the first two days of the incursion, penetrating “at least two Russian defensive lines”, it said on August 7.

But since Russia has rushed reinforcements to the area, the rate of Ukraine’s advance into the region has slowed, it later reported.

A Russian commander told the TASS news agency on Tuesday that Moscow had managed to stop the “uncontrolled” movement of Ukraine’s forces, while the defence ministry said it had “foiled” new Ukrainian attacks in the region.

What is Russia’s response?

President Vladimir Putin did not publicly comment on the attack until August 7, when he announced Ukraine was carrying out a “large-scale provocation” in the Kursk region.

“It is firing indiscriminately from various types of weapons, including rockets, at civilian buildings, residential houses and ambulances,” he said in a televised meeting, vowing to meet with security officials to co-ordinate a response.

Russia said on August 9 it was moving more troops and weapons to the Kursk region, including “rocket launchers, towed artillery guns, (and) tanks”.

Videos published on the same day by the Zvezda news outlet, which is run by the defence ministry, purported to show Russian armoured columns moving towards the border.

The Russian army has claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on Ukraine, killing over 100 soldiers and destroying over 50 armoured vehicles since the incursion began.

These figures could not be independently verified.

The strongman leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, said fighters from his Akhmat battalion had also been deployed to the region.

Belarus, Russia’s close ally, on Saturday ordered military reinforcements — ground troops, air units, air defence and rocket systems — to be deployed closer to its border with Ukraine in response to Kyiv’s incursion, the defence ministry in Minsk said.

What has Ukraine said?

Ukraine has been tight-lipped about its operation, the biggest on Russian soil since the war began.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last Thursday that Russia had brought war to his country and needed to “feel” the consequences.

He confirmed on Monday that the cross-border offensive was taking place, saying it was “purely a security issue”, and that Kyiv was capturing “areas from which the Russia army struck at our Sumy region”.

In the Sumy region, which sits directly across from the Kursk region, authorities have ordered the evacuation of some 20,000 civilians.

AFP journalists in the region saw dozens of armoured vehicles daubed with a white triangle — the insignia apparently being used to identify Ukrainian military hardware deployed in the attack.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry insisted Tuesday that the incursion was “legitimate” but that it was not interested in “taking over” territory it had captured.