President Volodymyr Zelensky said for the first time Monday that Ukrainian forces were operating in Russia’s Belgorod region, where Moscow reported attacks in March.
Belgorod is regularly the target of Ukrainian air attacks and is close to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been desperately hanging on to territory since launching a surprise incursion last year.
Zelensky said in his daily address that the country’s commander in chief General Oleksandr Syrsky had reported on “our presence in Kursk region and our presence in Belgorod region.”
“We continue to conduct active operations in the border areas on the enemy’s territory, and this is absolutely right — the war must return to where it came from,” Zelensky added.
It is the first time in the more than three years since Russia’s invasion that Zelensky has explicitly mentioned a Ukrainian presence in Belgorod, a region on the border with Ukraine with a population of about 1.5 million people.
The Russian military acknowledged facing Ukrainian land attacks in the region in March, at a time when Ukrainian forces were under pressure in Kursk.
According to the DeepState military blog, which is considered close to Ukraine’s army, Ukrainian troops have occupied a 13 square kilometer (five square mile) area in the Russian region, near the border village of Demidovka.
Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have said the incursion into Kursk and other Russian territory is to divert Russian forces attacking the Ukrainian regions of Sumy and Kharkiv.
“The commander in chief reported on the activity of our units along the border, as well as in the so-called grey zone and directly on enemy territory,” Zelensky said in his address.
