Putin has promised each person who escaped from the Kursk region a compensation of around one hundred euros.
Mikko Leppänen
Sarah Hussein
Marja Väänänen
Kari Nihti
A video shot from a moving car shows a Russian military convoy destroyed on the highway. Some of the vehicles appear to contain several dead people.
The video shows about 15 burned trucks. On the side of one is marked the letter Z, which Russia uses as the symbol of its so-called “special military operation”.
The news agency Reuters has confirmed that the video was filmed in the area of the village of Oktjabrskoye in the Kursk region. There is no certainty about the shooting time.
The target of the attack was apparently a Russian military convoy that was bringing additional troops to the Kursk region last night.
The Ukrainian Telegram channel that shared the video and Russian war bloggers estimate that Ukraine destroyed the Russian convoy with the American-made Himars rocket launcher system.
The Russian online magazine Mash reports that the Russian man who shot the video and delivered it to the Ukrainians has been arrested on suspicion of espionage.
The situation in the Kursk region is still partially shrouded in darkness. Reliable information about the surprise attack in Ukraine is scarce.
However, the destruction caused by Ukrainian forces on Russian soil is obviously an embarrassing issue for the Russian leadership.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Friday that it is moving reserve forces to the Kursk region due to the Ukrainian invasion.
According to the ministry, tanks, Grad rocket launchers, artillery and other equipment are on their way to the area.
Russia has said that it has already responded to Ukraine’s attack.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Friday that Ukraine had lost 945 soldiers and 102 armored vehicles in the Battle of Kursk. The ministry also released a video it claims shows the destruction of Ukrainian armored vehicles by suicide drones near the city of Suja.
The claims could not be confirmed by independent sources.
Ukrainian troops advanced deeper
Ukrainian troops have advanced from the border to a depth of up to 35 kilometers in Russian territory, says an American think tank Institute for the Study of War. However, according to the think tank, Ukraine does not control the entire region.
Also a Finnish expert following the war Emil Kastehelmi assessed to that Ukrainian forces are still operating in small population centers in the Kursk region.
Kastehelmi belongs to the Black Bird Group, which monitors the war using open sources.
– It can be considered that this is one of the biggest military operations that a foreign power has carried out on Russian soil since the Second World War, Kastehelmi said on Friday in an interview with Ylen Radio Suomen Päivä.
Russia has recently succeeded in capturing several villages in Donetsk and cornered the Ukrainian forces in the area in eastern Ukraine.
One of the goals of the offensive operation in Ukraine may be to force Russia to withdraw its forces from eastern Ukraine and transfer them to its own soil.
This is what several experts have assessed. A high-ranking Ukrainian official, who appeared anonymously, also said the same For The New York Times.
At the moment, however, it seems that Russia has not moved significant numbers of its troops out of Donetsk, Kastehelmi estimates.
Russia says it will evacuate thousands
Ukraine’s surprise attack has prompted rapid evacuations from the region.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry declared a “federal-level” state of emergency in the Kursk region on Friday.
According to the governor of the region, thousands of civilians have been evacuated.
President Vladimir Putin has called the attack in Ukraine a serious provocation, but has otherwise been very quiet about the events.
Putin has also promised that Russia will compensate those who escaped from Kursk with around one hundred euros, news reports The Kyiv Independent on Thursday.
Sources: AFP, AP, Reuters