According to Andrei Federov, former Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region is “quite a heavy tool of pressure on Russia.”
Speaking with a news agency, Federov stated that it was a “shock” to Russians that the attack was possible and that it was not over soon.
He denied that it was an intelligence failure, but a “pure reality” due to the length of the border with Ukraine.
He said that there are “weak chains” on the border that Ukrainian forces were aware of, and they wanted to show the West that Russia “can be disturbed very seriously.”
The former Russian diplomat pointed out that any operation to remove Ukrainian forces from the region would be complicated by the fact that Russia cannot use the same bombs as Luhansk and Donetsk due to the presence of the Sudzha metering station, the last major transit point for Russian pipeline gas heading to Europe via Ukraine.
Sudzha, a small town of about 5,000 people is home to the Sudzha metering station.
According to a Ukrainian news outlet, about 14.65 billion cubic metres of gas were transported through Sudzha in 2023, a little under half Russia’s gas exports to Europe.
While Europe has drastically cut its dependence on Russian pipeline gas since the invasion, Russia has kept supplying gas via Sudzha under a five-year agreement it signed with Kyiv at the end of 2019.
Ukraine has said that it will not renew the transit agreement when it expires at the end of 2024.
There are concerns that Russian state-run energy giant Gazprom could use the fighting as an excuse to prematurely halt gas exports via Sudzha.
The successful border breach at Kursk was also surprising because Ukraine has been short of manpower at the front as it waits for new brigades to complete training.
Dara Massicot, an Analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said that the Ukrainian breakthrough was a smart move because it exploited gaps between various Russian commands in Kursk: border guards, Ministry of Defense forces and Chechen units that have been fighting on Russia’s side in the war.
“Russian command and control is fractured in Kursk,” Massicot said on X late Monday.
Ukraine’s Western partners have said the country has the right to defend itself, including by attacking across the border. Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, August 13, 2024, that he backed the Ukrainian operation, though he said Kyiv officials didn’t consult him about it beforehand.
“What the Russian troops, the Russian air force is doing inside Ukraine bears the hallmarks of genocide, inhumane crimes, and Ukraine has every right to wage war in such a way as to paralyze Russia in its aggressive intentions as effectively as possible.”
Donald Tusk
UN Rights Office Concerned About Civilians After Ukraine Offensive In Russia
Also on Tuesday, the UN’s human rights agency spokesperson noted that it is concerned about the possible impact of recent military developments in the war between Russia and Ukraine in response to a question about Ukraine’s recent cross-border assault on the Kursk region.
“Wherever military operations are occurring by either side, the protection of civilians and civilian objects in accordance with international humanitarian law must be the top priority,” the spokesperson told a briefing.
The Spokesperson added that UN has unverified reports of four civilians killed, plus one male war correspondent and one female paramedic injured.
It has not been able to establish under what circumstances the casualties occurred.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s forces intensified their attacks in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Tuesday that over the previous 24 hours, Russian troops launched 52 assaults in the area of Pokrovsk, a town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that is close to the front line.
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