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Currently, the Armed Forces of Ukraine control about 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory.
This was stated by the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who spoke at the meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
“We are pursuing an offensive operation on the territory of Kursk region. Currently, we have under our control neary 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory. Troop groupings are fulfilling their tasks. Battles are going on… all along the front. The situation is under our control,” Sirskyi said, speaking via video link.
Earlier, the Institute for the Study of War think tank noted that the raid in Russia’s Kursk region allowed Ukrainian troops to at least temporarily seize battlefield initiative in one area of the front and contest Russia’s initiative throughout the war theater.
As previously reported, during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the acting governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Aleksey Smirnov, said the Armed Forces of Ukraine currently control 28 settlements in the region.
Smirnov said that the Ukrainian forces had advanced 12 kilometers into the Kursk region across a 40-kilometer front.
At this point, Putin interrupted him, saying that the width and depth of the Ukrainian military’s advancement would be reported by the Russian military, and suggested that the acting Kursk governor focus on the social and economic situation.
Smirnov said there were about 2,000 people in these 28 settlements, whose fate is unknown to the local Russian authorities. At the same time, 180,000 people in the region are to be evacuated and 121,000 have already left the region.
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