-
Ukraine launched a shocking counteroffensive against Russia last week.
-
U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that Russia would respond by withdrawing its troops from Ukraine.
-
U.S. officials said the scale of the withdrawal was unclear. Officials in Kyiv said it was a “relatively small” number of troops.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russia was withdrawing some troops from Ukraine in response to a Ukrainian offensive against Russia that began last week.
Politico Europe also reported Tuesday that a Kiev official said a “relatively small” number of Russian troops had been withdrawn in response to the Kursk attack. U.S. officials told the journal it was unclear how many troops Russia was withdrawing from Ukraine.
The State Department and the White House did not respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment.
Ukraine launched a shocking invasion of Russia around August 6, sending troops into the Kursk region. Kiev said this week that Ukrainian forces had seized about 400 square miles of Russian territory in a matter of days, roughly the same amount of territory that Russia has seized in Ukraine this year. Business Insider was unable to independently verify how much territory Ukraine has seized.
Ukraine has not said much about the invasion. In a speech Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian shells were being fired into Ukraine from the Kursk region and called the operation a “security issue,” according to Politico Europe.
“It is fair to destroy Russian terrorists where they are, where they start their attacks,” Zelensky said. He also said Ukraine could build up a prisoner “exchange fund.”
The ultimate goal is not yet clear, but military analysts said Kyiv could seek to squeeze Russian resources to gain a negotiating edge or to provide aid to troops stationed elsewhere, BI previously reported.
Ukraine may have been trying to embarrass Russia. The Kremlin tried to play down the attack, but military analysts previously told BI’s Tom Porter that the attack tarnished Putin’s image as a tough man.
Putin even tried to blame the West for the attack, saying Russia’s “peaceful” people did not deserve to be invaded.
The U.S. responded simply, with John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, saying on Monday: “There’s an easy solution: He just needs to get out of Ukraine and call it a day.”
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiz Tikhi said the aim of the strikes was “to save the lives of our people and protect Ukrainian territory from Russian aggression,” the Journal reported.
“The sooner the Russian Federation agrees to restore a just peace… the sooner the air strikes of the Ukrainian Defense Forces on the territory of the Russian Federation will stop,” he added.
Read the original article at Business Insider
