PUTIN: UKRAINE TRYING TO 'DESTABILIZE' RUSSIA

"As a result of targeted shelling with the use of rocket and artillery weapons against residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in the Karyzh village ... a third bridge over the Seym River was damaged."

Russia's Investigative Committee

 

"We have now achieved an extremely important ideological shift: the naive and illusory concept of so-called ‘red lines’ regarding Russia that dominated the assessments of the war by some of our partners has crumbled these days somewhere near Sudzha [seized Russian town, by Ukraine forces]."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a destroyed bridge across the Seim River at the Russian town of Glushkovo, in the Kursk region, on Saturday. (Planet Labs PBC/The Associated Press)

Russian President Vladmir Putin, assessing the Kremlin's war against Ukraine, condemns Kyiv for its 'terrorism' and its hostile intentions toward Russia leading to 'destabilization'. 

 

Russia's commitment to its 'special military operation' that really began in 2014 when it 'destabilized' its neighbour by annexing Crimea and most of the Donbas, since then destroying Ukraine's energy systems, shelling civilian infrastructure, claiming them to be military bases when its artillery aims for hospitals, schools, shopping centres, and in its unabated attacks that are truly war crimes killing thousands while forcing millions of Ukrainians to become refugees, is affronted when Ukraine responds.

Ukrainian forces have opened a new front in Russia's Kursk region, and have now succeeded in destroying three of the bridges crossing the Seym River in Western Russia. Kyiv's Kursk invasion has raised the morale of the population in Ukraine, sick of this war against their nation, raging over Russia's appropriation of Ukrainian geography. 

 

While Ukraine celebrates its incursion into Russian territory, eastern Ukraine is experiencing the real potential to lose the large and important city of Pokrovsk.

If the Kursk incursion was a well-planned and -executed scheme to provoke the Kremlin to ease  up around Pokrovsk and dispatch Russian troops to the Kursk area for a defensive action, that result appears not to have occurred. Not yet. 

 

Russian tacticians may yet rethink their refusal to detract from their push toward Pokrovsk, to secure the entire Donbas region. However, given the reality of those damaged/destroyed bridges having the potential to trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance and the Ukrainian border, a mind-changing response may yet occur.

 

The situation does appear to be impeding Russia's response to the incursion of Kursk, launched on August 6. Two videos of bridges over the Seym being hit were posted by Ukraine's Air Force commander over the weekend. While Planet Labs PBC published satellite photos of the bridges, The Associated Press confirmed the destruction of a bridge in the town of Glushkovo.

As well, it was confirmed on Monday by a Russian military investigator that Ukraine had "totally destroyed" one bridge and damaged another two in the area, even as the full extent of the damage remained unclear. A later analytic investigation confirmed that the 'damage' is no longer 'unclear', the bridges are destroyed.

Moreover, the Ukrainian army since its incursion into the Kursk region has captured 1,250 square kilometres and along with that, 92 Russian settlements. In a turnabout, resulting in tens of thousands of Russians fleeing the encroaching Ukrainian military, finding themselves experiencing the kind of dislocation that Ukrainians have been subjected to for several years. 

President Zelenskyy spoke of the operation's aim as that of a buffer zone being created, one meant to prevent future attacks on his country from across the border. Russian state news agency TASS, reported 17 people were killed,140 wounded during the incursion by the Ukraine military. That too bespeaks, to a much smaller degree, mirroring in part what Ukrainians have been forced to go through by Russia's territorial invasion.

Over the past 24 hours, according to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, over 500 people had been forced to abandon areas in the Kursk region; a total of 122,00 Russians have been resettled elsewhere since the Ukrainian attack. As well, a gigantic fire burned for a third consecutive day following a Ukrainian drone hit of an oil depot in the town of Proletarsk, burning across an area of a hectare.

Ukrainian push into Russia is 'catastrophic' for Putin's plans  Still from video/CBC