President Putin: Russian forces enter new areas of Ukraine
Russian soldiers are advancing on all fronts, the Russian president said.
Russian forces have entered the Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine for the first time since 2022, President Vladimir Putin said. He briefed reporters on the situation on the battlefield in St. Petersburg, a day after the United States and Russia held their first high-level talks in three years.
According to Mr. Putin, in the early morning of February 19, soldiers from the 810th Marine Brigade "crossed the border between the Russian Federation and Ukraine and entered enemy territory."
"Our army is attacking on all fronts," he added, without providing any other details.
The Russian Defense Ministry has posted videos of an Iskander ballistic missile hitting Ukrainian artillery positions in the Sumy region, and Russian marines using kamikaze drones to attack enemy trenches. However, in its daily update on February 19, the ministry did not report any major developments in the area.
Kiev offered a different version of events. Andrey Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, said that the Ukrainian military had “destroyed” a reconnaissance unit that had tried to cross the border. He denied there had been a “large-scale attack” in the area.
Russia first entered the Sumy region in the early days of the conflict in February 2022 and withdrew its troops two months later. In August 2024, Ukraine used the region to enter Russia's Kursk region and captured several border villages, as well as the town of Sudzha.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky later said he planned to use the incursion across Russia's internationally recognized border as leverage in potential peace talks.
Since then, Russian troops have been fighting to gradually push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk, with the Russian Defense Ministry reporting the liberation of the village of Sverdlikovo on February 19. “We have taken many prisoners,” a soldier from Russia’s Northern Operational Group told RIA Novosti.
Teams led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed ways to end the Ukraine conflict in Riyadh on February 18. Although no breakthrough was achieved, both sides agreed to work towards normalizing bilateral relations, which had been suspended by the Biden administration, by 2022.