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Ukraine has launched one of its most successful assaults on Russia yet with a surprise cross-border attack which has left Vladimir Putin humiliated.
Nearly 1,000 troops, backed by artillery fire and tanks, have pushed miles into Russian territory, forcing residents to flee and the Russian president to call up reservists to help his forces who were caught off guard.
Ukraine has not only held onto gains made in recent days, but systematically advanced through villages and towns in the Kursk region in the west of Russia.
Military experts described the assault as the most significant on Russian soil since the Second World War, and one which has hugely embarrassed Putin.
Ukraine is delighted by the success, and keen to show its allies in Nato that their support has been worthwhile, having recently been supplied with more weaponry and jets to help the wider war effort.
“Putin is humiliated; we’ve embarrassed Russia once again,” a Ukrainian defence source told The Independent. “We have shown to the Russian people that their tsar cannot protect them.
“For a year there’s been nothing positive to report from the front lines. This offensive really puts some new energy into the whole war machine.”
Verified footage released on Friday showed a burnt-out convoy of 15 Russian military trucks spaced out along a highway in the Kursk region, some containing the bodies of dead soldiers.
Rybar, an influential Russian military blogger with more than a million followers, described how Ukrainian units successfully ambushed village after village.
Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of the Kursk region, said Moscow had declared a state of federal emergency in the morning, with thousands of people having evacuated already.
Ukrainian forces had been under pressure from Russian advances around Donetsk in the east, and in the second city of Kharkiv in the northeast, where Moscow’s troops had been pushing forward since May.
Before this latest audacious assault, Ukraine had found success with long-range drone attacks deep into Russia, aimed at destroying the planes, missiles and bombs that are striking Ukrainian cities. On Friday, a Russian plane-launched missile slammed into a Ukrainian shopping centre in the middle of the day, killing at least 14 people and wounding 44 others, authorities said. The mall in Kostiantynivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, is located in the town's residential area.
On Thursday night, Ukrainian drones attacked Russia’s Lipetsk region, about 180 miles from the border. They struck a military airfield which is used as a base for Russian fighter jets and helicopters and is understood to have more than 700 powerful glide bombs in storage.
Ukrainian special forces also conducted an amphibious raid on the Russian-occupied Kinburn Spit in the Black Sea's northwest on Friday, destroying six Russian armoured vehicles and about three dozen personnel, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said. Russian forces captured the area, which juts out into the Black Sea, at the start of their full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Moscow's military vantage point on the spit is seen as one of the reasons why Ukraine cannot reopen its ports of Mykolaiv and Kherson and export goods from them via its Black Sea shipping corridor.
Back around Kursk, Putin has been forced to call in reinforcements, including extra tanks, artillery and rocket systems, with the assault in its fourth day as of Friday.
James Nixey, director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Chatham House think tank, said the gains proved to allies such as the US and UK that Ukraine is still “in it to win it”, adding that the Americans “love to back a winner”.
Mark Galeotti, one of the world’s leading experts on Russian security, said the element of surprise in the attack had been vital.
“It’s the biggest attack on Russia since the Nazis... There’s no getting away from that – it shows Ukraine has a capability and a will which caught the Russians by surprise. It’s a huge embarrassment for Putin.
“It has shown this classic case of the Ukrainians being fast, nimble, smart and unexpected, and the lumbering Russian bear being caught off guard.”
But he added a note of caution, warning that the Ukrainian aggression could play into Putin’s need to galvanise his own people.
Patrick Bury, a former British Army air assault infantry captain and now senior associate professor in warfare at the University of Bath, said the incursion had landed a “left hook” on Russia.
“Is it a good look for President Putin that the largest incursion into Russia – invasion, you could say – since the midpoint of the Second World War has happened? No. It’s not a good look. I think you’ll see damage limitation, trying to play things down as less serious than they are.”
For Ukraine, the assault is something to celebrate. “All of a sudden, we are in a strong position again,” the Ukrainian defence source said. “The picture was pretty grim before this incursion. The Russians were advancing little by little, village by village. It began to create a setting in which even our partners, those who support us, who are on our side - would say we trust in you but it’s not working.”
