Ukrainian troops hold 1,000 square kilometres of Russia, says military chief

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Ukraine has seized around 1,000 square kilometres of territory inside Russia’s Kursk region, according to Kyiv’s army chief.
Oleksandr Syrskyi’s comments are the first from him on Ukraine’s shock cross-border incursion, which has been going on for almost a week.
“We continue to conduct offensive operations in the Kursk region. As of now, about 1,000 square kilometres of the territory of the Russian Federation are under our control,” Oleksandr Syrsky said in a video published on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s social media.
Mr Zelensky said he had ordered the preparation of a “humanitarian plan” for the area.
Russian forces are still scrambling to respond to the surprise Ukrainian attack that launched on Tuesday, but Vladimir Putin insisted Moscow’s army will prevail.
Speaking at a meeting with top security and defense officials, Putin said the attack appeared to reflect Kyiv’s attempt to gain a better negotiating position in possible future talks to end the war.
Meanwhile, Russia had to begin evacuations in a second border region, Belgorod.
The governor there announced the Krasnaya Yaruga district, on the frontier with Ukraine, would be evacuated.
Tass, Russia’s state news agency, reported that 11,000 people had been moved out.
“It has been an alarming morning,” said Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor.
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France should lift the ban on Western weapons being used to attack military targets inside Russia, Ukraine’s Defence Minister said on Monday. 
Rustem Umerov said he had spoken with Sebastien Lecornu, his French counterpart, about lifting the ban. 

“We’ve discussed recent frontline status.
I urged on the necessity to lift bans on hitting military targets on enemy’s territory,” Mr Umerov said.
Emmanuel Macron, the French President, previously said in May that Ukraine could “neutralise” targets inside Russia but only in areas from which missiles are fired, not civilian or military targets.
🇺🇦 🇫🇷 Had a productive call with Sébastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces of France.We’ve discussed recent frontline status. I urged on the necessity to lift bans on hitting military targets on enemy’s territory.
Vladimir Putin has vowed to “kick the enemy out of our territory” in response to Ukraine’s surprise border incursion.
The Russian president made the comments in a meeting with top security officials to discuss the fighting inside Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions.
”[T]he defence ministry’s main task is to push, to kick the enemy out of our territory,” Putin said.
Ukraine has engaged in the fighting to improve its negotiating position, he added. The Russian leader also said that the West had ignored a ceasefire proposal over the summer as Ukraine was planning the attack.
Ukraine began its lightning foray into Russian territory almost a week ago, overwhelming checkpoints and advancing 20 miles in some places.
Kyiv’s forces now appear to be digging trenches and building fortifications including a field hospital inside the Kursk region, in a sign that they are planning to stay.
Russian and Ukrainian forces clashed more than 80 times on Monday, according to Kyiv’s General Staff of the Armed forces. 
It said Ukrainian had repelled 19 attacks out of 25 carried out by Russian forces on the Pokrovsk front, in the western part of the Donetsk region. 
It also claimed six clashes took place in Kupiansk, in Kharkiv, while 17 attacks were successfully defended by Ukraine’s army in Lyman, Donetsk. 
For a seventh day, Ukrainian forces are up to 20 miles inside Russian territory, the first incursion since the Second World War, writes Joe Barnes.
Russia has evacuated a second border region as the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk enters a seventh day.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region announced on Monday that residents of Krasnaya Yaruga district, located on the frontier with Ukraine, would be evacuated due to Ukrainian military activity in the area.
Belgorod neighbours the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces broke into Russia in a major incursion that started last Tuesday.
Tass, Russia’s state news agency, reported on Monday that 11,000 people had been evacuated. “It has been an alarming morning,” said Vyacheslav Gladkov, the Belgorod governor. “[There has been] enemy activity on the border of Krasnaya Yaruga district.”
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Moscow should be present at the next peace summit, Switzerland’s foreign minister said on Monday. 
Ignazio Cassis’s comments followed a signed joint declaration he made with his Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani expressing “deep concern” over Russian aggression in Ukraine.
“We support holding a second peace summit that includes all parties, including Russia,” Cassis said on X, formerly Twitter. 
Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, has accused Russia of trying to “baselessly” accuse Kyiv of war crimes in the Kursk region.
It follows earlier allegations made by Alexei Smirnov, Kursk’s regional governor, that Ukraine has used chemical weapons in its cross-border assault. Mr Smirnov, however, did not provide evidence to back up his claims.
Russian forces have reduced the number of guided bomb attacks on border settlements in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, the local governor said on Monday.
“We have been recording a sharp decrease in guided bomb strikes in recent days. If our border area has seen from 30 to 60 guided bomb strikes per day, now no more than 10,” Oleh Syniehubov, the governor, told national TV.
Russia has long been pummelling Ukrainian villages lying on the border with artillery and extremely destructive guided bombs.
It stepped up attacks on the Kharkiv region in May, when Moscow’s troops opened a new front in the region’s north.
Lieutenant Juri Jalava keeps a stern eye on the red granite shores of the Baltic coastline as his patrol ship cuts through the water.
When he joined the Finnish coastguard in the aftermath of the Cold War, Lt Jalava was mainly inspecting pleasure boats and perhaps fishing out the odd drunk tourist.
Today, his patrol routine has been transformed by the tensions with Moscow; since the invasion of Ukraine and Finland’s entry into Nato, he is on alert for potential Russian spies or saboteurs.
“Everything has become more intense,” Lt Jalava told The Telegraph as his vessel cruised past a cluster of wind power turbines near the Åland Islands, an autonomous territory of Finland which is his main area of surveillance.
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The governor of Russia’s Kursk region has accused Kyiv of using chemical weapons during their cross-border assault, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported.
Alexei Smirnov, who did not appear to have evidence to back up his allegation, said that Ukrainian forces had used shells containing chemical weapons.
Ukraine’s forces appear to be digging trenches, other fortifications and a field hospital inside Russia’s Kursk region, in a sign that Kyiv is planning to stay.
“This is the worst thing that can happen,” commented Aleksandr Kharchenko, a Russian military correspondent who said he had witnessed Ukrainian troops fortifying their rapidly-taken positions.
Popular Russian telegram channel VChK-OGPU also reported that Kyiv was “creating a fully-fledged fortified area with a field hospital, strong points and dugouts” in the rear of its advance.
Ukraine has not yet said whether it intends to hold the land, but growing evidence hints that its Kursk offensive, which has pushed up to 20 miles inside Russia, will continue for the long term. 
Footage has emerged showing Ukrainian forces capturing a Russian tank during their incursion into Russia’s Kursk region on August 10.
In the video, troops from Ukraine’s 80th Airborne Assault Brigade claim to have seized one of Moscow’s newest tanks, the 2023 T-80BVM, with a full fuel tank and ammunition after they foiled an attempted ambush.
The governor of Russia’s Kursk region told Vladimir Putin on Monday that Ukraine now controls at least 28 settlements within the border region since it launched its surprise assault seven days ago.
Governor Alexei Smirnov also said that 121,000 people have left or been evacuated from the frontline zone, while 59,000 more needed to leave.
The civilian toll from the Ukraine’s incursion has risen to 12 dead and 121 injured, he added.
President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine was trying to undermine Russian stability with its incursion into the south of the country, but it would not succeed.
“The losses of the Ukrainian armed forces are increasing dramatically for them, including among the most combat-ready units, units that the enemy is transferring to our border,” Putin told a televised meeting with top security officials and regional governors.
“The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response, and all the goals facing us will, without a doubt, be achieved.”
Despite Russia’s weak response, it is “unlikely” that Kyiv would “want to sustain a large incursion for months,” said Matthew Savill, director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute.
“The Russians have been severely embarrassed and the loss of territory and evacuation of civilians will play poorly back in Russia as evidence they ‘can’t defend themselves’,” he added.
However, Mr Savill noted that Ukraine “must now make a decision about the best time to trade in the ground they have captured, and to what end”.
“Sustaining a force of any size in Russia, and defending against counter-attacks, will be hard, given the limited reserves available to Ukraine. Neither has it – thus far – resulted in the Russians slowing their advances around the Donbas, where the situations around Chasiv Yar and towards Povrovsk remain difficult,” he said.
A district in Russia’s border region of Belgorod has come under attack by Ukrainian forces, its governor has said.
Vyacheslav Gladkov said the city of Shebekino and the surrounding Shebekinsky district, had been shelled, damaging three apartment buildings and one private home.
Two nearby villages were also hit, he said.
Ukraine has said it has not seen any sign of a build-up of Belarusian forces near its shared border, contradicting a statement from Minsk that it had sent more troops to the area.
“In the last few days, we have not recorded any movement or build-up of Belarusian forces, various units, equipment and personnel near our border,” said Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s border guard service.
Belarus, a close Kremlin ally that borders Ukraine’s north, said on Saturday it was sending troops to reinforce its border with Ukraine after accusing Kyiv of violating its airspace with drones.
Russia has evacuated parts of another region bordering Ukraine just days after Kyiv launched the first foreign invasion into Russia since the Second World War.
Ukrainian forces rammed through the Russian border early on Tuesday and swept across some western parts of Russia’s Kursk region, forcing the evacuation of some 76,000.
However, Moscow on Monday began evacuating 11,000 from the neighbouring Belgorod region to the south after Kyiv sharply increased military activity near the border.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor, said residents of the Krasnaya Yaruga district were being moved to “safer places” due to threat of “enemy activity on the border”.
Authorities in Kursk also announced they were widening their evacuation area to include Belovsky district, home to some 14,000 people.
After falling from a peak of 17.8pc in 2022 following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, to just above 2pc last year, price pressures are building once again, writes Szu Ping Chan, the Telegraph’s Economics editor.
As Russian forces struggle to repel Ukraine’s border incursion, official figures last week showed inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, jumped by 9.1pc in the year to July.
Costs are rising everywhere, with food prices up 10pc year-on-year.
Eggs, which cost about 50pc more than they did a year ago, have become so expensive that families are handing them out as presents.
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Russian sources have claimed Ukraine is building fortifications and a field hospital in Russia’s Kursk region, a sign that Kyiv is digging in for the long haul.
VChK-OGPU, a Russian Telegram channel with over one million subscribers, wrote that the rear areas were being prepared around the towns of Novoivanovka, Lyubimovka, Malaya Loknya and Obukhovka, which are about six miles north of the border with Ukraine.
“In the rear the Ukrainian military has deployed and is creating a full-fledged fortified area with a field hospital, strong points and dugouts,” VChK-OGPU wrote.
The account describes the main battles as happening in Korenevo, a city north-east of Sudzha, along the 38K-030 highway.
The construction of field hospitals and heavy fortifications hint that Ukrainian forces are preparing for the Kursk offensive to continue for the long term. 
At least 11,000 people have been evacuated from Krasnaya Yaruga district in Russia’s Belgorod region, Russia state news agency Tass reported.
The regional governor said earlier that evacuations had begun due to “enemy activity on the border” following Ukraine’s invasion of the neighbouring Kursk region.
Ukrainian soldiers have filmed themselves inside Russian villages, tearing down flags and raising their own, amid Kyiv’s ongoing invasion of the Kursk region.
As the surprise cross-border offensive reaches its seventh day, Moscow has been forced to admit that Ukraine’s forces have pierced up to 20 miles into Russian territory, making westward and northwestward gains.
The head of Russia’s state nuclear energy company Rosatom has said that the cooling tower at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant may need to be replaced.
It comes after a fire broke out at the plant, which was taken by Russia in March 2022 but sits dangerously close to the front line, on Sunday.
Footage circulated on social media showed plumes of black smoke pouring out of one of the towers, while radiation was reported to be at normal levels.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for what the UN’s nuclear watchdog called “reckless attacks” on its infrastructure that risked a nuclear incident.
Russia’s Belgorod region which borders Ukraine is under a missile alert amid the growing threat from Ukraine’s troops, its governor said.
In an alert on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said: “The entire territory of the Belgorod region is a MISSILE DANGER. Go down to the basement. Stay there until you receive the signal ‘All clear missile danger’.”
Earlier on Monday, he said that parts of Belgorod were being evacuated due to threat of “enemy activity on the border” as Ukraine continues its cross-border invasion of the neighbouring region of Kursk to the north.
A Ukrainian deputy energy minister accused of taking a $500,000 (£391,000) bribe has been arrested along with three alleged accomplices, Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Monday.
The minister, whom the SBU did not name, allegedly demanded mining industry officials pay him to transfer equipment from mines in the frontline eastern Donetsk region to a coal basin in western Ukraine.
The minister took the payment with the help of three alleged accomplices, all of whom were caught “red handed”, the SBU said.
Ukraine has been plagued by corruption for years, but President Volodymyr Zelensky has promised to rid his country of graft and arrested and jailed many officials in the process.
Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region has allowed Kyiv to seize the battlefield initiative for the first time since the end of last year, analysts have said.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based think tank, said that since November 2023 Russia has been able to “determine the location, time, scale and requirements of fighting in Ukraine”
It “has forced the Kremlin and Russian military command to react and redeploy forces and means to the sector” and “contest Russia’s theatre-wide initiative” in at least one area of the frontline.
NEW: Ukraine’s operation in Kursk Oblast has allowed Ukrainian forces to at least temporarily seize the battlefield initiative in one area of the frontline and contest Russia’s theater-wide initiative.🧵(1/7) pic.twitter.com/13ppuSwCMa
German manufacturer Rheinmetall will supply battle tanks to the Czech Republic as part of a swap mechanism to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The Czech army will receive 14 Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks and one armoured recovery vehicle and in turn it will send military equipment to Ukraine, the firm said in a statement.
The total value of the order is in the low three-digit million euro range and delivery will be completed by the beginning of 2026, said Rheinmetall.
Russia’s ministry of defence released footage purporting to show three strikes on Ukrainian armoured vehicles inside the border region of Kursk, which Kyiv invaded last week.
“After analysing the intelligence data received, a decision was made to conduct pinpoint fire impact on enemy armored vehicles using Lancet loitering munitions,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
“Objective control footage obtained in real time made it possible to verify the destruction of the identified targets.”
Around $2.3 billion (£1.8 billion) in dollar and euro bills have been shipped to Russia since the US and EU banned the export of their banknotes there in March 2022.
The previously unreported customs data seen by Reuters shows that Russia has managed to circumvent sanctions blocking cash imports, and suggest that dollars and euros remain useful tools for trade and travel.
The cash was transported to Russia from countries including the UAE and Turkey, which have not imposed restrictions on trade with Russia. The country of origin for more than half the total was not stated in the records.
Russians who fled from a cross-border attack by Ukraine have described abandoning their homes and running for their lives as local government control collapsed.
Panic spread quickly through villages in the Kursk region, in southern Russia, as Kyiv’s forces staged the first foreign invasion of Russian soil since the Second World War last week.
“We don’t understand why they don’t tell the truth,” one woman told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper. “On TV, they kept saying, ‘this is an emergency’.
“What kind of emergency is it when there are foreign tanks on our land? This is already a real war.”
Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of starting a fire in the grounds of Europe’s largest and now Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine on Sunday.
The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog, which has a presence at the vast six-reactor facility, said its experts had seen strong, dark smoke coming from the northern area of the plant in southern Ukraine following multiple explosions.
“These reckless attacks endanger nuclear safety at the plant and increase the risk of a nuclear accident. They must stop now,” warned Rafael Grossi, the IAEA chief, late on Sunday, without attributing blame for the attack.
The fire has been “completely extinguished”, a Moscow-installed official said Monday.
Russian forces started a fire at a nuclear power station in southern Ukraine to “blackmail” Kyiv as it pushes into Russian territory, Volodymyr Zelensky said.
A Ukrainian official said there was “unofficial” information that Russia on Sunday had set fire to a large number of car tyres on the cooling towers of the facility in Zaporizhzhia, which it occupied shortly after launching an invasion in February 2022.
Footage circulated on social media shows plumes of black smoke pouring off one of the towers.
While radiation is said to be at normal levels, it may have been a warning to Kyiv as it advances into Russian territory after launching a cross-border invasion on August 6.
Read the full story here.
China on Monday urged all sides in the Ukraine war to de-escalate as Kyiv’s forces pierced deep into Beijing ally Russia’s Kursk border region.
China has urged all parties to follow “three principles for de-escalating the situation,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Those are “no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of fighting and no fuelling the flame by any party…China will continue to maintain communication with the international community and play a constructive role in promoting a political solution to the crisis,” they added.
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