As Russian troops retake settlements in Kursk Oblast, Ukraine launches attack on adjacent Russian region
In late March, Ukrainian troops launched a raid into Russia's Belgorod Oblast.
The small-scale incursion into yet another Russian region may be Ukraine's attempt to alleviate the pressure from the country's troops still fighting in the adjacent Kursk Oblast, military experts say.
Following Russia's recapture of the logistics hub of Sudzha in mid-March, Ukrainian troops were forced to withdraw from a substantial part of Russia's Kursk Oblast, which was in Kyiv's hands for over seven months.
Now, using both mechanized attacks with engineering vehicles to clear obstacles and mines, as well as small-scale infiltration tactics, Kyiv has been attempting a new cross-border operation, said John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
He added that it is unclear which side controls the villages in no-man's land near the border.
"In general, it doesn't look like any gains Ukraine has made have been very significant in terms of territory taken," Hardie told the Kyiv Independent.
While it is too early to draw conclusions, the scale of the Belgorod Oblast raid and the proximity to Russian units already fighting in Kursk Oblast likely won't allow "a huge diversion of Russian forces," according to Hardie.
It is still unclear whether Ukraine wants to hold onto the possible captured territory in Belgorod Oblast for longer or if it was meant to be a short-term raid.
Kyiv has carried out occasional cross-border raids since 2023, with a variety of Russian volunteer soldiers fighting alongside Ukraine leading the way. The raids were hours-long and were primarily political operations rather than military ones.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian troops were trying to "wedge" into the western part of Belgorod Oblast, toward the villages of Demidovka and Prilesye just near the border.
Moscow claimed that Kyiv was conducting a cross-border raid "to create a negative background" amid the ongoing talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, who is pushing for a rushed peace deal to end the war at all costs.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed in the same Telegram post on March 18 that it prevented a border breakthrough and claimed to have killed 60 Ukrainian soldiers, as well as destroyed one tank, seven armored combat vehicles, three engineering vehicles, and a car.
The Ukrainian military has not commented on the developments in Belgorod Oblast so far.
The D.C.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said, citing geolocated footage published on March 29, that Ukrainian forces advanced in the village of Popovka, which sits right near the Ukrainian border and is next to the embattled Kursk Oblast.
Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst at the Finland-based Black Bird Group, observing the open-source data to track the war in Ukraine, said that it is possible that Russian troops may have already conducted some counteroperations to restrict a further Ukrainian advance. He assessed that Ukraine is likely still operating, at least around the Demidovka village.
Kastehelmi said it is likely "a lie-fixing operation" to divert the Russian attention from Russian Kursk and the adjacent Ukrainian Sumy Oblast. But Russia should have enough forces in the area to carry on their offensive operations in Kursk Oblast while also preventing Ukrainian advances in Belgorod Oblast, the analyst added.
"It's really difficult to say what the larger goal of this operation is, because such a tiny piece of land doesn't really hold any military or political advantage," Kastehelmi told the Kyiv Independent.
The Ukrainian troop number is unclear, but Western vehicles, such as U.S. Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, appear to have been part of the operation, Kastehelmi said, citing Russian videos. He added that he is not sure if Ukrainian troops were still actively pushing forward or if they were just holding onto the positions that they captured, as the "element of surprise" at the initial phase of the raid is gone.
With the city of Belgorod being about 100 kilometers away and the absence of larger Russian logistical routes nearby, the area around the few villages where fighting allegedly continues "isn't really important," the analyst said.
Read also: The rise and fall of Ukraine's Kursk gambit
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