| | | At a Russian Border Post, Scenes of Ruin After Ukraine’s Surprise Attack
A week after the biggest foreign incursion into Russia since World War II, The New York Times visited one of the spots where Ukrainian forces stormed into Russia and surprised the defenders.
nytimes.com
All that remained of a Russian border post was a tableau of destruction: Sheet metal flapped in the wind, customs declarations fluttered about, and stray dogs roamed under a road-spanning sign that said, “Russia.”
Kicking up dust, Ukrainian armored vehicles rumbled past, unimpeded, as the flow of men and weaponry carried on in the biggest foreign incursion into Russia since World War II, an offensive now nearing the end of its first week since the breach of the border here in Sudzha and at several other sites.
At the crossing point, a Ukrainian soldier posted on the roadside waved at the forces passing by, days after Russia’s head of the general staff declared that the attack had been rebuffed.
At the border, the detritus of a losing battle — and signs of soldiers caught by surprise — were scattered about: bullet cartridges tinkled underfoot, discarded body armor lay on the asphalt.
Taking the fight to Russian soil was a weighty moment for Ukraine in its war with Russia, coming two and a half years after Russia launched a full-scale invasion and 10 years after Russia intervened militarily to seize territory and support separatist client states in eastern Ukraine.
Within the first month of the war, Ukraine did strike back with a cross-border helicopter assault and has regularly bombarded Russian oil refineries and airfields with a fleet of homemade drones. Two smaller, earlier forays into Russia by Russian exile groups backed by the Ukrainian Army ended in quick retreats.
But until last week, Ukraine forces had not counterattacked into Russia.
Ukrainian troops sliced easily through a thinly defended border, pushing tens of miles into Russia and shifting the narrative of the war after a glum year in which Ukraine had struggled, often in vain, to hold back Russian advances across its eastern front.
By Monday, Ukraine’s commanding general had told President Volodymyr Zelensky that his troops held 390 square miles of territory in Russia’s southeastern Kursk region. Two dozen settlements were overrun.
“I’m happy to be riding a tank into Russia, and it is better than them driving tanks into our country,” said one Ukrainian soldier who was interviewed by The New York Times while squatting atop a tank parked along the supply route for the fighting, a dusty, bustling highway for armored vehicles, fuel trucks and pickups.
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