Authorities in southwestern Russia’s Kursk region said Wednesday that more than 150,000 people living in communities near the border with Ukraine have been forced to evacuate their homes in the weeks since Kyiv launched its surprise incursion early last month.
Kursk region Governor Alexei Smirnov said those who had been displaced due to cross-border clashes were “relocated to safe areas,” according to the state-run TASS news agency.
Last month, Smirnov told President Vladimir Putin that eight Kursk region districts — equivalent to counties in the United States or England — were placed under evacuation orders, impacting more than 152,000 people. The region has a total population of 1.2 million.
Both the scale of the evacuations and the cross-border fighting has not been seen in Russia since World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Russian authorities have repeatedly invoked historical parallels with that conflict and Moscow’s current war against Ukraine.
Smirnov, who made his remarks Wednesday at a Russian Agriculture Ministry meeting, estimated that Ukraine’s incursion had cost the Kursk region’s agricultural sector some 85 billion rubles ($932.6 million).
Meanwhile, regional authorities have not provided an update on the civilian death toll as a result of the cross-border clashes since mid-August. State-run media, citing anonymous medical personnel, reported that more than 30 people had died due to the fighting as of Aug. 21.
Pro-Kremlin sources claimed late Tuesday that Russian forces launched a counteroffensive against Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region’s Korenevsky district, which borders northeastern Ukraine’s Sumy region.
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