Washington: The United States has announced a military aid package of $125 million for Ukraine, including weapons, much-needed air defence capabilities, radars and anti-tank weapons, as Kyiv has launched one of its largest ground offensives in Russia's southwestern Kursk region since the war began in 2022, taking Moscow by surprise.
Moscow has accused Ukraine this week of launching a cross-border assault in Russia's Kursk region. At least 1,000 Ukrainian forces broke across the border on Tuesday (August 6) in a shock counter-offensive, after months of gradual Russian advances in eastern Ukraine, in one of its largest attacks since the war broke out. Russia has declared a federal emergency in the area and is sending reinforcements there.
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said Ukraine's use of US -provided weapons in the offensive was in line with administration policies. The weapons in this package will be drawn from existing US stocks and will include Stinger missiles, 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) ammunition and vehicles. It brings the total amount of US aid to Ukraine since 2022 to $55.6 billion.
How did the Ukrainian attack take place?
Russia has imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions as it scrambles forces to counter Ukraine's unprecedented attack. The country's defence ministry said on Saturday that its forces continue to repel Ukrainian troops, who have reportedly advanced as much as 35 km inside Russian territory.
President Vladimir Putin's administration also moved extra tanks, artillery and rocket systems to the Kursk region as Ukrainian forces posted a video purporting to show them in control of a town near the border, the first pictorial evidence of their cross-border advances. The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, said drone debris had fallen on a power substation near Kurchatov, the site of one of Russia's largest nuclear power stations with four reactors.
The incursion into the Kursk region reportedly involved units from several battle-hardened Ukrainian army brigades. Russian military bloggers reported that Ukrainian mobile groups comprised of several armoured vehicles each quickly drove dozens of kilometres into Russian territory, bypassing fortifications. With the bulk of the Russian army engaged in the offensive in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, few troops were left to protect the Kursk border region and the renewed offensive by Kyiv caught them off-guard.
Russia missile attack kills 14 in Ukraine
Putin has described the surprise incursion by Ukraine as a “large-scale provocation” that involved “indiscriminate shelling of civilian buildings, residential houses and ambulances.” At least five civilians, including two ambulance workers, have reportedly been killed in the Ukrainian attack on the Kursk region and nearly 70 others have been wounded.
Meanwhile, a Russian missile attack struck a supermarket in the Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka in the front-line Donetsk region on Friday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 43 others, Ukrainian officials said. "Russian terrorists hit an ordinary supermarket and a post office. There are people under the rubble," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X.
Residential houses, shops and more than dozen cars were as well damaged in the attack, according to the interior minister's post on Telegram. Kostiantynivka lies just about 13 km from the active combat line in Ukraine's east. The region is one of the hottest areas of fighting as Russia targets areas in the direction of the strategic eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
(with inputs from agencies)
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