An adviser to the Ukrainian president said today that Kiev’s cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was necessary to persuade Moscow to start “fair, peaceful” talks.

Mykhailo Podoliak said that Ukraine is not interested in taking Kursk, but must force Russia to start talks on Kiev’s terms.

“We need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia”Podoliak wrote in a post on the Telegram app.

“In the Kursk region, we clearly see how the military tool is used objectively to persuade the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process»

Ukraine launched a cross-border attack on Russia last week and occupied part of the Kursk region.

Senior Ukrainian officials have repeatedly stated that Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be fully respected in any peace deal. ,

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and today it controls about 18% of its territory.

Bloody Ukrainian attacks in Kursk and Donetsk, according to Russian reports

As Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russian territory enters its 10th day, Ukrainian forces have launched attacks in Kursk and Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine.

Fighting has been raging between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region since August 6, when Kiev launched a surprise raid, the largest attack on Russian soil since World War II.

Today, two aid workers helping to evacuate civilians from Kursk were killed by shelling, their organization said. These two workers of the Popular Front, an organization that brings together many Russian MCOs, “were killed by a missile that hit their vehicle in one of the border districts of the Kursk region.”

“They were helping to remove civilians to temporary accommodation centers“, the organization said, adding that a third person was injured.

The two aid workers killed were Nikolai Kovalev, a nurse, and David Sokolov, a press officer, according to this source.

More than 120,000 people have been displaced by the fighting and shelling, at least 12 people have been killed and more than 120 injured, according to Russian authorities.

Separately today, Ukrainian raids targeting a shopping center in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine killed at least two people and wounded at least seven, according to Russian authorities and Russian media.

“Initial reports indicate at least two deaths“, TASS reported, citing local operational services, adding that the death toll could rise. The RIA news agency published a video showing huge clouds of smoke rising from the “Galaktika” shopping center.

“Since 12 noon today, the enemy has been carrying out targeted mass strikes in the Petrovsky district of the regional capital,” said Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-appointed local governor.

“According to initial reports, seven civilians, including a teenager, were injured. Reports of the injured continue to come in“, he emphasized in his own account of the victims of the attack.

Pusilin said the mall was engulfed in flames over an area of ​​more than 10,000 square meters as a result of the attack and that authorities were still working to extinguish the fire. Part of a local hospital was also damaged, he said.

For its part, Russia announced that it had captured a village about 15 km from the city of Pokrovsk, a major logistics hub in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces said they had taken control of the village of Serhyifka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the state-run TASS news agency reported today, citing the Defense Ministry.

These advances are a sign of unabated pressure on the eastern Ukrainian front, despite the surprise Ukrainian attack on Kursk.

While this invasion is attracting a lot of attention, the bulk of the fighting continues to take place in Ukraine’s Donbas, where Russian troops have the upper hand.

Today, Ukrainian airborne troops released a video purported to show the first hours of the start of the Ukrainian invasion, the combat unit said today.

The video, which has music and is directed like an action film, states that August 6, the day the attack began, will go down in history as a historic day in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The text accompanying the video highlights: “Demining, border breach, destruction of enemy defense facilities, airstrikes, artillery fire and capture of prisoners of war,” claiming that Russian border guards and the Russian military were completely taken by surprise by the attack.

The video’s authenticity could not be independently verified at first, but it was shared on several Ukrainian and Russian news sites.