dpa
Kiev/Moscow
Ukrainian troops have taken control of the small Russian town of Sudzha and will establish a military command office there, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.
The office will oversee the maintenance of law and order and cater to the basic needs of the local Russian population, Zelensky said following a meeting with Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Sudzha only had a pre-war population of around 5,000 people. But it is the administrative centre of a border district in Russia’s Kursk region, making its fall to Ukraine an embarrassing defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelensky, in a video message posted on social media, said more than 80 other settlements had been captured and that Ukraine’s 10-day-old cross-border incursion continued to advance deeper into Russia. About 1,150 square kilometres of Russian territory is now under Ukrainian control, Kiev said.
Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov announced more reinforcements in troops and materiel for the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions on the border with Ukraine.
"In the first instance, this is about improving the efficiency of the troop management system in cooperation with the security authorities,” Belousov said during a meeting on protecting the border region with the focus on Belgorod, located next to Kursk.
He said he would personally monitor the plan’s implementation. The aim was better coordination between the Defence Ministry, the domestic Federal Security Service (FSB), the national guard and other security organizations, he said.
Russian authorities ordered the evacuation of another district in the embattled Kursk region, according to acting Governor Alexei Smirnov.
People in the Glushkovsky district are to be brought to safety, he said in a post late on Wednesday. The district, about 10 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, had more than 17,500 registered inhabitants before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In parts of the Kursk region, there are reportedly heavy clashes between Moscow’s and Kiev’s armies, according to Russian military bloggers, after Ukraine launched a ground offensive on Russian territory last week as it seeks to repel Russian forces.