Putin says Kursk incursion will not stop Russian advance in east Ukraine

MOSCOW

President Vladimir Putin said Monday Kiev's incursion into Russia's Kursk region will not stop Moscow's advance in east Ukraine and vowed to deal with Ukrainian "bandits" there.

Ukraine's surprise August 6 incursion into Russia has displaced around 130,000 people and seen Kiev hold on to parts of the border Kursk region.

Moscow has since continued to press into east Ukraine, resisting pulling troops from occupied Ukraine towards Kursk.

"Their calculation was to stop our offensive actions in key parts of the Donbas. The result is known... They did not achieve stopping our advance in the Donbas," Putin told school children in Siberia.

"The result is clear. Yes, people are going through difficult experiences, especially in the Kursk region. But the main aim that the enemy had — to stop our offensive in Donbas — it did not achieve," Putin said.

He added Moscow is seeing advances at a "rate that we did not have for a long time."

Kiev has said one of its aims of going into Kursk was to stretch the Russian amy and force it to pull reserves from east Ukraine.

"We have to of course deal with these bandits that entered the territory of the Russian Federation, specifically the Kursk region, attempting to destabilise the situation in the border areas," Putin said.

The Russian leader's language was a break from previous statements on the incursion, which he had described as "the situation that has evolved".

Ukraine downs Russian drones

Ukraine said Monday it had downed 22 Russian missiles headed towards Kiev and two other regions overnight during an attack in which two people were wounded.

In the northeastern city of Sumy, a social welfare centre for children and an orphanage suffered damage after a missile strike on Sunday evening, injuring 13 people including four children, the mayor Oleksandr Lysenko said on Telegram.

"On September 2 overnight, the Russian occupiers carried out a missile attack on Kiev, Sumy and Kharkiv regions using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and anti-aircraft guided missiles, and attacked with Shahed-type UAVs from the south," the Ukranian air force said.

It said Ukrainian defense forces had shot down nine ballistic missiles, 13 cruise missiles and 20 attack drones.

Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko said two adults were injured and four cars caught fire from falling debris.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia's Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, said an overnight aerial attack by Ukrainian forces wounded one person and damaged a shop and an infrastructure facility in the eponymous capital Belgorod.

Russia said Sunday it had repelled a "massive" Ukrainian drone attack on energy and fuel plants in Moscow and 14 regions, one of the largest such strikes since the start of the two and half-year conflict.

"It is entirely justified for Ukrainians to respond to Russian terror by any means necessary to stop it," President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Facebook.

The latest barrage saw 158 drones fired, most of them downed over the regions of Kursk, Bryansk, Voronezh and Belgorod which border Ukraine, Russia's defense ministry said.

On Sunday afternoon, Russia struck Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv with missiles, injuring 47 people including seven children, according to the emergency services.

National police said Russia injuring 21 at a shopping centre and 18 at a sports centre, of whom five were children.

The attack caused "large-scale destruction and fires," the emergency service said and "people could be under the rubble".