The Ukrainian military is engaged in “active defence” of its counter-invasion position in Russia, and the misinterpretation of a reorganisation of forces as a retreat is Russian propaganda, Kyiv’s minister of defence has claimed.
Ukraine is heavily denying claims published in Western media, and cited as justification for a quick peace by President Donald Trump, that its forces inside Russia had become encircled and were on the brink of destruction. No less than the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov, told Fox News on Sunday that such claims are propaganda, and what was being witnessed was not a retreat but rather a reorganisation.
“We continue to conduct the defensive operations and we are keeping a significant number of kilometres of the enemy’s territory under control”, Umerov said, adding, “We have conducted some planned redeployment to a more favourable defence line” to preserve the fighting ability of the Ukrainian armed forces.
“No unit of the defence forces are encircled,” and claims that thousands of Ukrainian troops are on the verge of destruction by Russia are false, the defence minister reassured. This is “propaganda”, Umerov said.
These claims and counterclaims revolve around Ukraine’s seven-month-old counter-invasion of Russia into its Kursk Oblast, a region of Western Russia bordering Ukraine. Kyiv’s decision to counter invade Russia is widely credited with two purposes: to force Moscow to divert frontline troops to a new front to defend its own territory and to give Ukraine a bargaining chip for the negotiating table should peace talks ever come.
Ukraine appears to have a euphemism for this — “active defence operations”, which Umerov says means “offensive actions against the flanks of the enemy’s forces to prevent its invasion into our territory”. But last week, as reported, it was stated this Ukrainian toe-hold in mainland Russia was crumbling, and Ukrainian troops were retreating in self-preservation. It was stated then:
…according to a report from Forbes, the “bulk” of the Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk, including “some of the Ukrainian army’s heaviest brigades”, have been forced to retreat and return to the Ukrainian side of the border as Russian troops threatened to encircle Kyiv’s forces.
While the Ukrainian forces had previously managed to fend off Moscow’s attempts to recapture the territory, Russia has recently succeeded in reclaiming some of the region.
In war, encirclement is a serious matter, called a “killing field” and historically leading to horrendous casualties. President Trump himself appears to have cited the plight of the Ukrainian Army in Kursk as part of the rationale for a rapid path to peace, saying he wants to prevent a massacre. He said last week: “At this very moment, thousands of Ukrainian troops are completely surrounded by the Russian military and are in a very bad and vulnerable position”.
Russia, for its part, has played up the degree to which it has been pushing back Ukraine in Kursk Oblast, no doubt as much for public morale purposes at home as for international grandstanding. In recent days, the Kremlin has claimed it has inflicted “very serious casualties” on the Ukrainian counter-invasion, saying there had been 68,000 Ukrainians killed and maimed in the seven months of the operation and that Russian forces have now retaken 86 per cent of the land area that Kyiv once held inside Russia.
Russia has also made lurid claims about the presence of foreign “mercenaries” in the service of Kyiv, claiming they had committed “war crimes” and “terrorism” against civilians on Russian territory and even that the foreigners had been shooting Ukrainian soldiers on their own side if they attempted to retreat. Ukraine has denied these claims, stating such assertions were purely Russian lies intended to derail peace talks.
In further comments on Kursk, Russia has stated its plan is not only to retake its own territory, but to stage a counter-counter-invasion, pushing beyond its own legal borders from Kursk into Ukraine’s Sumy region. Russia’s Major General Apty Alaudinov was cited in state media as having said of the intent of his forces: “Not only will we have liberated our own land, but we will also establish the buffer zone that the supreme commander-in-chief has tasked us with creating. We will accomplish this as well”.
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