The troops are advancing in all sections of the front line, the president has said
FILE PHOTO. © Sputnik / Sergey Bobylev
Russian troops have entered Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy Region for the first time since 2022, President Vladimir Putin has said. He briefly spoke about the situation of the battlefield with reporters in St. Petersburg, a day after the US and Russia held first high-profile talks in three years.
According to Putin, in the early hours of Wednesday, the soldiers from the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade “crossed the border between the Russian Federation and Ukraine and entered the enemy territory.”
“Our troops are on the offensive in all sections of the front line,” he added, without providing more details.
The Russian Defense Ministry posted videos of an Iskander ballistic missile hitting Ukrainian artillery positions in the Sumy Region and Russian naval infantrymen flying kamikaze drones into the enemy trenches. The ministry did not report any major advancements in the area in its daily update on Wednesday.
Kiev provided a different account of the events. Andrey Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, claimed that Ukrainian troops have “destroyed” a reconnaissance unit that had tried to cross the border. He denied a “large-scale offensive” in the area.
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Russia first invaded the Sumy Region in the early days of the conflict in February 2022 and withdrew two months later. In August 2024, Ukraine used the area to invade Russia’s Kursk Region and capture several border villages, as well as the town of Sudzha. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has since said that he had planned to use an incursion across Russia’s internationally recognized borders as leverage during potential peace talks.
The Russian troops have since been fighting to gradually push the Ukrainians from Kursk, with the MOD reporting the liberation of the village of Sverdlikovo on Wednesday. “We took many prisoners,” a soldier from Russia’s battlegroup North told RIA Novosti.
The teams led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed paths to end the Ukraine conflict in Riyadh on Tuesday. While no breakthroughs have been archieved, both sides agreed to work towards the normalization of bilateral ties that were suspended by the Biden administration in 2022.