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Russia evacuated more than 11,000 people from settlements near the border on Monday, bringing the number displaced close to 100,000 as Ukraine pursued its surprise incursion, the first ground invasion of Russia since the second world war.
Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region has caught out Vladimir Putin’s forces since it began a week ago, and has raised the prospect of Moscow losing its internationally recognised territory for the first time since the Russian president ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
As battles continued to rage on Monday and the fighting appeared to spill over into neighbouring districts, Russia seemed to have made scant progress in reclaiming the land lost in the area as local officials stepped up efforts to evacuate residents.
Moscow’s defence ministry said its troops were “continuing to beat back the attempt by Ukraine’s armed forces to invade Russian territory” but did not claim to have reclaimed any of the land lost as Ukraine advanced more than 30km past the border.
All but 500 people left the Krasnoyaruzhsky district in the southern Belgorod region, local officials said, after governor Vyacheslav Gladkov warned early on Monday that there was “enemy activity on the border”.
Gladkov said Ukrainian forces had been shelling the area, damaging a house and a power line.
The fighting has so far been concentrated in the Kursk region, which acting governor Alexei Smirnov said had “dealt with an unbelievable ordeal and the pain of losses” over a “difficult week”.
“The main thing to do in this situation is to stick together, believe in our security forces and army, and help each other and the common cause with what we can,” Smirnov posted on social media.
On Monday, Smirnov ordered the evacuation of residents from the Belovsky district, adding to the more than 84,000 people that emergency services say have already left their homes in border areas in the Kursk region.
Despite Russia deploying reinforcements to the two areas, Kyiv has succeeded in occupying at least 140 sq km of territory, according to Ukrainian war analysis site Deepstate, which has links to the military.
The rouble fell 1.9 per cent to trade at Rbs90 to the dollar, its weakest level since May.
The Ukrainian counter-incursion, now in its seventh day, comes as Kyiv’s forces struggle to hold the line in the eastern Donbas region, where Russian troops have made some territorial gains.
Ukrainian officials have been tight-lipped about the operations, but analysts say that they could be aimed at diverting Russian forces and to use the captured territory as leverage in any potential talks.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday — in a thinly veiled reference to the Kursk operation — that Kyiv wanted to “push the war on to the aggressor’s territory” and put “pressure” on Russia to “restore justice”.
Russia’s defence ministry had asked local authorities to cut electricity to several settlements in Belgorod’s Grayvoronskyi district, which also borders Ukraine, said Gladkov, the governor.
Alexander Kots, a war reporter for pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that a small number of Ukrainian forces had attempted to cross the border at the Kolotilovka checkpoint in Krasnoyaruzhsky district, and the Bezymeno checkpoint in Grayvoronskyi, but had been pushed back.
Kots said that Ukrainian forces were looking for other places where they could push through. The Financial Times could not verify the claims.
Separately, Ukraine claimed Russia had started a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian occupation since March 2022.
Zelenskyy said that radiation levels were normal but warned that as long as Russia controlled the plant there was a threat.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has access to the plant, said it had been told there had been a drone attack on one of the cooling towers.
“No impact has been reported for nuclear safety,” the IAEA said in a statement posted on X.
Rosatom, the Russian state-owned company that operates the plant, said the “main fire” had been extinguished shortly before midnight on Sunday.
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