Zelenskiy aide says ‘root cause of any escalation’, including into Kursk, is Moscow’s ‘unequivocal aggression’
Ukraine has publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces are advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region on the third day of its incursion.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the president’s office, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.
The statement is the first acknowledgment by any leading Ukrainian official of the ongoing offensive amid silence from the country’s military on events in the Russian region. “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes,” Podolyak added.
I mentioned to my wife about a month or 2 ago, that Ukraine should totally do something like this.
Russia possibly out of arrogance, seemed to believe that Ukraine would not attack them across the border. So their border defenses seemed pretty thin from what I heard.
We also saw with the Russian resistance cross border action earlier, that they achieved a lot with almost nothing, so an actual military attack would have a very high chance of success.
This is a very good move strategically by Zelenskyj and the Ukrainian generals IMO. It finally puts an end to much of the Russian retorik, and it forces Russia to divert resources on the Russian border, to uncontested areas. And it gives Ukraine something to negotiate with.
If the stories are true, that much of Russian gas exports to Europe are controlled from there, that’s a huge reason to hit Russia there too.
Finally it brings the Ukraine front a little bit closer to Moscow.
EDIT:
It seems to be confirmed that Ukraine now have control of the meter station for gas exports to EU. Allegedly controlling the last remaining pipeline with export to EU.
I’ve been seeing a few details coming out from this about gas pipelines being a big reason for a push into this particular region of Russia. But things I haven’t seen talked about are things like this will cause Russia to have to spread troops thinner from the eastern fronts to handle this incursion. It’s also far enough away from Belarus that they don’t need to worry about any collateral damage. And most importantly, it’s in the general direction of Moscow so it cranks things up a notch in terms of proximity to the general population.
Yes, I think this is a very crucial point, Russia has pretty much been able to control which points are hot spots, so they could concentrate forces there.
But now Ukraine has been able to push through, because they chose a poorly defended area into Russia, instead of trying to push Russians back on the front lines in Ukraine.
They have made an offensive that wasn’t costly, but they can still make costly for Russia to take back. So now part of the war is on Russian ground, and destroying Russia instead of Ukraine. Literally taking the war to Russia.