Moscow’s forces are trying to create a “security strip” in the border areas of Ukraine’s Sumy region after driving Ukrainian troops out of Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region. Ukraine claims it still has a small foothold in Kursk, but has warned for months that Russia is planning an offensive into Sumy. Vladimir Putin said in March that Russia should look to carve out a “buffer zone” in Ukraine’s northeastern region to guard against any future Ukrainian cross-border incursions.
”Units of the North group of forces have completed the rout of Ukrainian Armed Forces formations in the Kursk region,” the Russian defence ministry said on Friday. “The creation of a ‘security strip’ in the border areas of Ukraine’s Sumy region continues.” Analysts say that up to 52 square miles of Sumy is a contested “grey zone”, referring to an area of the battlefield that neither side fully controls. “Our paratroopers, having broken the stubborn resistance of the enemy, advanced in the area of Loknya and in the border forest belts” in Sumy, Two Majors, an influential Russian war blogger, referring to the area close to the border.
A commander of a Russian airborne assault brigade said Ukraine’s troops fighting in Sumy were demoralised. “We have disorganised their command system,” he told Russia’s TASS news agency. Oleh Hryhorov, the governor of Sumy, warned on Tuesday that Russia was having little success in carving out a buffer zone, but acknowledged that four border villages in the region were in a “grey zone” due to Russian attacks.
