Authorities in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region on Friday denied reports of Ukrainian troops launching an incursion into a village on the border with Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
Open-source intelligence bloggers speculated earlier this week that Ukraine may have opened a “new axis” in the Belgorod region village of Zhuravlevka to cut off one of the Russian army’s supply lines amid fighting on the Ukrainian side of the border.
“Commenting on Zhuravlevka… I’d like to say it’s under the full control of our troops as of this day and this hour,” Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video posted on Telegram, adding that “the situation there has been difficult since Feb. 22, 2022.”
The unconfirmed reports of the border breach come after Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency published a video of an operation in which it claimed to destroy a Russian regiment and clear a section of the forest near the Ukrainian village of Lyptsi, around 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) south of Zhuravlevka.
It did not mention any incursion into Russian territory.
Lyptsi is among several areas in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region where clashes with Russian troops have been ongoing for months.
Ukraine recaptured large swathes of the Kharkiv region that the Russian forces managed to seize in the early weeks of its full-scale invasion.
Russia’s Belgorod region lies south of the Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops launched a surprise cross-border incursion on Aug. 6 and still remain in control of Russian territory despite Moscow’s counteroffensive there.
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