Ukrainian incursion continues into Kursk region: Russia

KYIV, Aug 08 (AP): Russian troops are fighting Ukrainian forces in the third day of one of the largest cross-border incursions of the war, the Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday.
A ministry statement said the Russian military and border guards have blocked Ukrainian forces from advancing deeper into the Kursk region in southwest Russia and that the army is attacking Ukrainian combatants who are trying to advance on the area from Ukraine's Sumy region.
"Attempts by individual units to break through deep into the territory in the Kursk direction are being suppressed," the ministry said.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that as of Wednesday, Ukrainian troops had advanced as much as 10 kilometers (6 miles) into Russian territory, but that information wasn't confirmed. Ukrainian officials haven't commented on the scope of the operation around the town of Sudzha.
"The enemy has not advanced a single meter, on the contrary, it is retreating. The enemy's equipment and combat forces are being actively destroyed. We hope that in the near future ... the enemy will be stopped," the Kursk region's acting deputy governor Andrei Belostotsky said Thursday, according to state news agency RIA-Novosti.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday described the incursion as a "large-scale provocation."
Putin met with his top defense and security officials to discuss what he called the "indiscriminate shelling of civilian buildings, residential houses, ambulances with different types of weapons." He instructed the Cabinet to coordinate assistance to the Kursk region. The fighting is about 500 kilometers (320 miles) from Moscow.
Army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov told Putin at the meeting via video link that about 100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the battle and more than 200 others were wounded, Russian news agencies reported.
The Ukrainian shelling, meanwhile, killed at least two people - a paramedic and an ambulance driver - and wounded 24 others, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement Wednesday.
It wasn't possible to independently verify the Russian claims. Disinformation and propaganda have played a central role in the war, now in its third year. John Kirby, the White House's national security spokesman, declined to comment on the operation and said the Biden administration has reached out to the Ukrainians to better understand what happened.
The cross-border foray would be among Ukraine's largest since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, and unprecedented for its deployment of Ukrainian military units.
Some Russian war bloggers who have proved knowledgeable about the war said that Ukrainian soldiers were in Kursk.