(Adnkronos) – Ukraine continues its attack on the Russian region of Kursk and uses American bombs. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin outlines the road map to reconquer the territory invaded by Kiev and also sets a deadline.
The offensive of the Ukrainian armed forces remains in the spotlight in the war that has been going on for more than 900 days. The operation is aimed at ending the war “on the terms of an independent Ukraine,” says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, stressing that to end the war it is necessary to create as many problems as possible for the Russian state on its territory.
“We all need to understand that in order to expel the occupier from our land, we need to create as many problems as possible for the Russian state on its territory. This is the heroic work of our soldiers. And this heroic work is more accurate, longer-range and more effective,” he added. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that it used American high-precision bombs, model GBU-39, to strike Russian military targets in the Kursk region. “The United States could stop Ukraine’s actions with a snap of its fingers,” Anatoly Antonov, Russian ambassador to Washington, said at the same time.
Putin also spoke, denouncing the Ukrainian attempt to “strike a nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency was informed about this and promised to send specialists to assess the situation. I hope that in the end they will do this,” the Russian president said, quoted by the Tass agency.
Putin’s conduct has been in the spotlight since the beginning of the Ukrainian offensive. Analysts from the Institute for the study of war (ISW), an American think tank that monitors the conflict, refer to a communication campaign launched by the Kremlin: the aim would be to make the limited presence of Ukrainian soldiers on Russian territory ‘acceptable’ to public opinion.
This would be, as Russian government sources confirmed to the independent outlet Meduza, a sort of ‘unforeseen event’ that should not overshadow the priority: the Russian campaign in Donetsk, characterized by advances by Moscow’s forces in recent days and destined to end with the ‘inevitable’ defeat of Kiev.
Putin has no intention of formalizing the emergency in the Kursk region, and for this reason the elections for the new governor, scheduled for September, remain on the calendar. The information collected by Meduza paints a wait-and-see picture from Moscow: all the Russian sources consulted expect the hostilities in Kursk to last for months, with the high probability that the Kremlin will continue to favor operations in Donetsk and will not order the redeployment of troops on its territory.
The Ukrainian newspaper RBC painted a different picture: Putin has asked to liberate Kursk by October 1st and the objective must be achieved without the help of units currently deployed in the areas of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, in eastern Ukraine. Kiev’s armed forces entered Russia on August 6th. Even if Putin’s deadline were to be met, the Kremlin would have to justify the invaders’ presence on national soil for about 2 months.
The president would have considered a new mobilization to counter the enemy advance, but the idea was shelved due to the repercussions that such a measure would have on the economy. The possibility of continuing to use conscripts, conscript soldiers, in the Kursk region remains in the background. Putin, at the beginning of the war, announced that conscripts would not be used on the front line. However, about 2 weeks ago, very young conscript soldiers found themselves having to counter – with terrible results – the Ukrainian incursion.
