Ukrainian servicemen operate a Soviet-made T-72 tank in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia, on August 12, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Roman Pilipey | Afp | Getty Images
Ukraine’s audacious incursion into Russian border territory a week ago came as a surprise to many officials within the government in Kyiv, a senior Ukrainian official familiar with the matter told CNBC Monday — only a handful of people knew about the operation beforehand, and government officials have since been ordered to be in “silent mode” as to its strategic goals.
Ukraine’s initial silence with regards to the cross-border raid, and ongoing tactic of “strategic ambiguity” designed to keep Russia “off balance,” appears to have been key to its initial success and current advances into the Kursk region.
Russia’s slow and sluggish response to what Russian President Vladimir Putin branded a “large-scale provocation” has also exposed weaknesses in its military command and has humiliated its leadership.
One week on from the launch of the border raid and information is slowly emerging as to the size and scale of Ukraine’s operation on Russian soil, and its objectives.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated on Sunday that it was designed “to put pressure on the aggressor Russia” and to push “the war into the aggressor’s territory.”
Revealing further details in his first public comments on the Kursk operation, Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Monday that Ukraine now controls around 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of the region.
Russian official Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of the Kursk region, told a solemn-looking Putin via videoconference Monday that Ukraine controlled 28 settlements. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said geolocated footage suggests Ukraine controls a higher number of around 40 settlements, as of Monday.
In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) chairs a meeting regarding the situation in the Kursk region, in his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow, on August 12, 2024.
Gavriil Grigorov | Afp | Getty Images
Several thousand Ukrainian troops are now operating inside Russia, the senior Ukrainian official told CNBC, and “hundreds” of Russian prisoners of war had already been captured because “they were taken off guard” by the launch of last week’s operation.
Ukraine has no immediate plans to turn back either, according to the government official, who spoke to CNBC on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing operation in Kursk.
“We are not we’re not being overly excited, overly jubilant, because everybody understands that is still the war …. but what happens, and what continues to develop in Kursk, is going to really have a huge impact on how this war continues to go,” the official said, likening the significance of the latest operation to the liberation of Kherson, in…
Read More: What does Ukraine want from its incursion into Russia?