Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, claimed on Monday that Kyiv’s attempt to invade the Kursk region over international borders was failing because his army was moving quickly forward in eastern Ukraine.
As a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), he made these remarks shortly before departing Russia on a trip to Mongolia. The trip was perceived as a show of defiance since the ICC had issued an arrest order for him last year.
Even as Ukraine launched a surprise border incursion into its own territory, Moscow’s forces continued to gain ground on the vast frontline in eastern Ukraine.
Putin acknowledged the difficulties Ukraine’s counteroffensive the largest attack by a foreign army on Russia since World War II was putting on Russian border regions, but struck a defiant tone.
“People are experiencing and undergoing severe hardship, especially in the Kursk region,” Putin said in a speech to schoolchildren at a televised event in Siberia.
“But the enemy did not achieve the main task that they set themselves: to stop our offensive in the Donbas… We have not had such a pace of offensive in the Donbas for a long time,” he said.
The Donbas refers to a large area of eastern Ukraine covering the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which Moscow claims to have annexed.
