MOSCOW (AP) — Russia announced Saturday that it had evacuated tens of thousands of people from its border region and launched a “counterterrorism operation” as it struggled to engage a first Ukrainian incursion.
At the same time, Moscow warned that fighting in the Kursk region of western Russia threatens a nuclear power plant.
Ukrainian teams crossed the border on Tuesday morning in what is so far the largest and largest offensive of its kind carried out in Kiev in the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
Its troops spread out over several kilometers, forcing the Russian army to rush to look for additional materials and apparatus; None of the aspects provided the exact main points of the forces involved.
This came as overnight explosions broke out over the weekend in the center and east of the Ukrainian capital kyiv, AFP journalists found, as the Ukrainian air force announced that two Russian missiles were heading towards the city.
In the capital, air raid sirens sounded and at least two lightning flashes were seen in the sky, an AFP journalist said.
kyiv’s army leadership said in a Telegram post that the city’s air defense systems had been activated. Ukraine’s air force said five more regions were attacked with drones.
In recent days, many Ukrainians have increasingly expressed the idea that Moscow will launch airstrikes in reaction to Kyiv’s recent offensive on Russian territory.
Local officials detailed the scale of civilian evacuations from cities and towns near the combat zone.
“More than 76,000 people have been temporarily transferred to other locations,” an official from the regional Emergency Situations Ministry said via the official TASS news agency at a news conference on Saturday.
Emergency aid was delivered to the border area and more trains to the capital Moscow were put into service for others fleeing the fighting.
“The war has come to us,” a woman, who did not want to call, told AFP after arriving at the Moscow exercise centre on Friday.
However, on Saturday afternoon, air raid sirens sounded in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
AFP journalists saw at least two lightning bolts in the night sky and the Ukrainian air force said five other regions were attacked by drones.
Kyiv has maintained a strict operational silence on the offensive and for several days Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made indirect references to the fighting there.
But in his speech on Saturday night, Zelensky referred to army leader Oleksandr Syrsky’s briefings “on the line and our movements and on how to take the war to the territory of the aggressor. “
Thanking the infantrymen involved, he added: “Ukraine is showing that it can deliver justice and promises precisely the kind of tension needed: tension on the aggressor. »
The Russian military showed on Saturday that it is still fighting the Ukrainian incursion for a fifth day.
He said kyiv’s forces first crossed the border with about 1,000 soldiers, 20 armored vehicles and 11 tanks, although he claimed on Saturday that they had destroyed five times as much military equipment so far.
The National Anti-Terrorist Committee of Russia announced on Friday night that it was informing citizens of “anti-terrorist operations in the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions. ”
The Belgorod and Bryansk regions, bordering Ukraine, have also been hit by shelling and airstrikes since the start of the Russian offensive in February 2022.
The security forces and military have broad emergency powers for “counter-terrorist” operations.
Movement is restricted, cars may be impounded, phone calls may be monitored, prohibited spaces are declared, checkpoints are set up, and security is heightened at key infrastructure sites.
On Saturday, on the streets of Moscow, AFP journalists sought difficult measures to quell the response, but also some anger at the way the raid was allowed to take place.
“We have to take every measure imaginable in a situation like this,” said Alexander Ilyin, a 42-year-old architect.
The counter-terrorism committee said Ukraine had introduced an “unprecedented scenario to destabilise the situation in several regions of our country”.
On Friday, Russia gave the impression that it was going to retaliate by launching a missile attack on a supermarket in the eastern Ukraine city of Kostyantynivka, which killed at least 14 people.
Three other people were killed Saturday in the northeastern Kharkiv region, local officials said.
Ukraine also said it had to evacuate another 20,000 people from the Sumy region, just across the border from Kursk.
While neither aspect has provided explicit main points about the Ukrainian incursion, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the Ukrainian incursion had reached some positions as far as 10 kilometers from the border.
It also reported attacking Ukrainian troops in spaces 30 kilometers away, an indication of the scale and intensity of Ukraine’s advance.
Russia’s best friend Belarus on Saturday ordered the deployment of army reinforcements (base troops, air units, air defense and rocket systems) to its border with Ukraine in reaction to the kyiv incursion, its Defense Ministry announced. .