Incursion Into Russia's Kursk Region Would Be Most Significant To Date

The largest Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Federation since the main Russian invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022 is underway in the Kursk Oblast, with the approach to the crucial gas-transit town of Sudzha the main site of intense fighting. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the act a 'major provocation', with the Russian military forced to divert resources from elsewhere to repel the ~300 Ukrainian soldiers.

• The Russian Defence Ministry claimed that the border villages of Nikolayevo-Daryino and Oleshnya were attacked by Ukrainian troops supported by 11 tanks and +20 armoured vehicles. Euronews reports "The clashes extended as far as the outskirts of Sudzha, a town of some 5,000 people about 10 kilometres from the border near Ukraine's region of Sumy."
• Such an attack has not yet been confirmed by Kyiv. The timing is notable, given that Ukraine's forces are facing major assaults on Donbas around the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk amid a major shortage of manpower and materiel.
• The location of the gas transit hub for the Druzhba pipeline just across the border into Russia makes the area one of significant regional and European importance.
• Unconfirmed reports claim that the Ukrainian troops have taken the hub, but the operator tells Reuters that the physical flow of gas is being maintained. As BBC freelancer Leonid Ragozin notes, this "...appears to be how Ukraine has chosen to resolve its dispute over Russian gas supplies to Slovakia and Hungary. The Russians are likely to recapture [the hub], but it will be destroyed in the process."