A Ukrainian official says the incursion into Russian territory is aimed at putting pressure on Moscow to enter into a “fair negotiation process.”
Russia says its forces have destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage group in its western Kursk region, where kyiv has launched a daring incursion into Russian territory.
The state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported on Friday that Ukrainian troops were carrying weapons supplied by NATO countries.
“At the liquidation site of a Ukrainian sabotage group near the village of Kremyanoe in the Kursk region, samples of small arms manufactured by the United States and Sweden have been seized,” a Russian security official told RIA Novosti.
Russia's state news agency TASS also cited the country's Defense Ministry as saying Ukraine lost 220 soldiers and 19 armored vehicles on Friday as Russian forces repelled Ukrainian advances in several areas of Kursk.
However, Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskii said Kiev forces were advancing between one and three kilometres in the Kursk region.
Kursk Region Governor Alexei Smirnov said Ukraine destroyed a road bridge over the Seym River in the region's Glushkovsky district. Russian security officials told TASS that the attack could hamper the evacuation of the border district's estimated 20,000 residents.
The Ukrainian military, which has been fighting off a Russian invasion since February 2022, launched the Kursk offensive earlier this month. The offensive has been described as the first incursion by a foreign army into Russia since World War II.
On Thursday, Ukraine said it had captured the Russian town of Sudzha, a strategic natural gas hub in the Kursk region.
kyiv has stressed that it has no intention of taking Russian territory. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that Ukraine must force Russia to start negotiations on the conditions proposed by kyiv.
“We need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia,” Podolyak wrote on Telegram. “In the Kursk region, we clearly see how military tools are objectively used to convince the Russian Federation to start a fair negotiation process.”
Al Jazeera defence editor Alex Gatopoulos said the Kursk campaign had been an important “morale boost” for Ukraine.
He added that the raid serves as a message to the Russians that their government may not be telling the truth about the war efforts.
“Russian citizens see Russian civilians under Ukrainian control and Ukrainian military units on Russian soil, which has been a real shock,” Gatopoulos said.
Nikolai Patrushev, an influential adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday that the West and NATO helped plan the surprise attack on Ukraine, something Washington has denied.
“Without their participation and direct support, kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory,” Patrushev told Izvestia newspaper.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 after a months-long standoff that saw Moscow demand an end to NATO expansion into the former Soviet republics.
Ukrainian forces successfully countered the initial Russian attack, which appeared to be aimed at capturing kyiv. Since then, fighting has been concentrated mainly in the eastern regions of the country.
Russia has been slowly advancing in eastern Ukraine in recent months as the war looked set to turn into a protracted conflict. A Ukrainian counteroffensive last year failed to bring about significant changes on the battlefield.
On Friday, Russian state news agencies said at least two people were killed and several others wounded when Ukrainian shelling hit a shopping mall in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
The United States and its Western allies have provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to kyiv while imposing harsh sanctions against the Russian economy over the invasion.
