Ukrainian officials said the invasion of Russian territory was intended to force Moscow into a “fair negotiating process.”
Russia said it had destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage group in the western region of Kursk, where Kiev was also the site of a daring incursion into Russian territory.
State news agency RIA Novosti reported on Friday that the Ukrainian military was transporting weapons provided by NATO countries.
“Samples of small arms manufactured in the United States and Sweden were seized at the site of the liquidation of a Ukrainian sabotage group near the village of Kremyannoye in the Kursk region,” RIA reported, citing a Russian security official.
Russian state news agency TASS quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying Ukraine lost 220 soldiers and 19 armored vehicles on Friday as Russian forces repelled Ukrainian advances in several areas of Kursk.
However, Ukrainian Army Chief of Staff Oleksandr Sirsky said Kiev forces were advancing 1-3 km in the Kursk region.
Kursk Region Governor Alexei Smirnov said Ukraine had destroyed a road bridge over the Seim River in the region’s Glushkovsky district. Russian security officials told TASS that the attack could hinder the continued evacuation of about 20,000 residents of the border district.
Ukrainian forces, which have been fighting a Russian invasion since February 2022, launched the Kursk Offensive earlier this month, which has been described as the first foreign military incursion into Russia since World War II.
On Thursday, Ukraine said it had seized the Russian town of Sudzha, a strategic natural gas hub in the Kursk region.
Kiev has stressed that it has no intention of retaining Russian territory. Mikhail Podolyak, a member of the Ukrainian presidential advisory council, said Ukraine should have forced Russia to start talks on Kiev’s terms.
“We must inflict a significant tactical defeat on Russia,” Podolyak wrote in Telegram. “In the Kursk region, we clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process.”
Al Jazeera’s defense editor Alex Gatopoulos said the Kursk operation “played a vital role in boosting morale” in Ukraine.
He added that the invasion sent a message to Russians that their government might not be telling the truth about its war effort.
“Ordinary Russians see Russian civilians under Ukrainian control and Ukrainian military units on Russian territory, and it’s really shocking,” Gatopoulos said.
Nikolai Patrushev, an influential adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday that the West and NATO helped plan a surprise attack on Ukraine, a charge denied by Washington.
“Without their participation and direct support, Kiev would not have entered Russian territory,” Patrushev told Izvestia newspaper.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 after months of standoff, during which Moscow demanded an end to NATO expansion into the former Soviet republic.
Ukrainian forces successfully resisted an initial Russian offensive that appeared to be aimed at capturing Kiev. Since then, fighting has mainly taken place in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has made slow progress in eastern Ukraine in recent months, as the war seemed set to turn into a protracted conflict. A Ukrainian counteroffensive last year failed to make much of a difference on the battlefield.
On Friday, Russian state news agencies reported that Ukrainian artillery shelling of a shopping center in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine killed at least two people and wounded several others.
The United States and its Western allies have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to Kiev, while imposing severe sanctions on the Russian economy over the invasion.
