This handout photograph taken and released by the Government of Kursk region of Russia on August 9, 2024, shows women and children being evacuated from the town of Rylsk in Kursk region. Agence France-Presse
MOSCOW — Russia said Saturday it had evacuated tens of thousands of people from its border region and launched a “counter-terror operation” as it struggled to contain a major Ukrainian incursion.
At the same time, Moscow warned that the fighting in Russia’s western Kursk region was endangering a nuclear power plant.
Ukrainian units stormed across the border on Tuesday morning in what so far has been the largest and most successful such offensive by Kyiv in the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
READ: Thousands evacuated as Russia battles major Ukrainian border incursion
Its troops have advanced several kilometers forcing Russia’s army to rush in reserves and extra equipment — though neither side has given precise details on the forces committed.
Local officials detailed the scale of civilian evacuations from towns and villages close to the combat zone.
“More than 76,000 people have been temporarily relocated to safe places,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted an official from the regional emergency situations ministry as saying at a press briefing on Saturday.
Emergency aid has been ferried into the border area and extra trains to the capital Moscow have been put on for people fleeing the fighting.
READ: Ukraine presses offensive as airfield fire reported deep inside Russia
“The war has come to us,” one woman — who declined to give her name — told AFP after arriving at a Moscow train station on Friday.
Late on Saturday however, air raid sirens sounded in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
AFP journalists noted at least two flashes in the night sky, and Ukraine’s air force said five other regions were being attacked by drones.
Mass evacuations
Kyiv has maintained a strict operational silence on the offensive and for several days Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made only oblique references to the fighting there.
But in Saturday’s evening address, Zelensky referred to army chief Oleksandr Syrsky’s briefings “on the frontline and our actions and pushing the war into the aggressor’s territory”.
Thanking the soldiers involved, he added: “Ukraine is proving that it can really bring justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed — pressure on the aggressor.”
Russia’s army on Saturday confirmed it was still fighting the Ukrainian incursion for a fifth day.
It said Kyiv’s forces had initially crossed the border with around 1,000 troops, 20 armoured vehicles and 11 tanks, though it claimed on Saturday to have destroyed five times that much military hardware so far.
‘Unprecedented’
Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said late Friday it was starting “counter-terror operations in the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions” to protect citizens.
The Belgorod and Bryansk regions bordering Ukraine have also been hit hard by shelling and aerial attacks since Russia launched its offensive in February 2022.
Security forces and the military have sweeping emergency powers during “counter-terror” operations.
Movement is restricted, vehicles can be seized, phone calls can be monitored, areas are declared no-go zones, checkpoints introduced, and security is beefed up at key infrastructure sites.
On the streets of Moscow Saturday, AFP journalists found support for tough measures to quell the response, but also some anger at how the incursion had been allowed to happen.
“We have to take all the steps that are possible in such a situation,” said Alexander Ilyin, a 42-year-old architect.
The anti-terrorism committee said Ukraine had mounted an “unprecedented attempt to destabilise the situation in a number of regions of our country”.
Russia on Friday appeared to hit back, launching a missile strike on a supermarket in the east Ukrainian town of Kostyantynivka that killed at least 14 people.
Another three were killed in the northeastern Kharkiv region on Saturday, local officials said.
Ukraine also said it had had to evacuate 20,000 people from the Sumy region, just across the border from Kursk.
While neither side has provided precise details on Ukraine’s incursion, Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday said it had hit some Ukrainian positions as far as 10 kilometers (six miles) from the border.
It also reported hitting Ukrainian troops in areas 30 kilometers apart — an indication as to the breadth, as well as depth of Ukraine’s advance.
Belarus, Russia’s close ally, on Saturday ordered military reinforcements — ground troops, air units, air defence and rocket systems — to be deployed closer to its border with Ukraine in response to Kyiv’s incursion, its defence ministry said.
‘Particularly effective’
Russia’s nuclear agency on Saturday warned of a “direct threat” to the nearby Kursk nuclear power station, less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the fighting.
“The actions of the Ukrainian army pose a direct threat” to the Kursk plant in western Russia, state news agencies cited its atomic energy agency Rosatom as saying.
On Friday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressing similar concerns, had called for “maximum restraint”.
Zelensky’s comments Saturday notwithstanding, Ukraine’s leaders have remained tight-lipped on the operation.
The United States, Kyiv’s closest ally, said it had not been informed of the plans in advance.
Elsewhere on the frontline, Ukraine on Saturday reported the lowest number of “combat engagements” on its territory since June 10.
That could be a sign its incursion is helping to relieve pressure on other parts of the sprawling frontline where Moscow’s troops had been advancing.