DISINFO: Ukraine’s advance into Russia’s Kursk Region is barbaric and terrorist
SUMMARY
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region is barbaric. It is aimed at destroying civilian infrastructure and killing and intimidating civilians. The organisers and perpetrators of these crimes, including their foreign curators, will be held accountable. Ukraine’s missile and drone attacks on Russian regions are clearly terrorist in their nature.
RESPONSE
This is a pro-Kremlin disinformation claim trying to portray the Ukrainian Armed Forces in a bad light, made in the context of Russia's full-scale of Ukraine.
Several thousand Ukrainian troops entered Russia’s adjacent Kursk Region on 6 August 2024 and controlled about 600 square kilometres of Russian territory as of the time of writing this case. The town of Sudzha and several villages were seized. Information about what is happening has been very limited so far, mainly coming from Russian sources. There has been no evidence of inhumane behaviour from Ukrainian troop towards civilians. Contrarily, Russian forces have committed numerous war crimes against Ukrainian civilians since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The incursion into the Kursk Region is part of Kyiv’s military strategy aimed at liberating all Ukrainian territories from Russian occupiers and restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders of 1991. Russia is using military facilities in the Kursk Region and other adjacent regions for deadly attacks on Ukrainian territory, which have caused thousands of civilian victims. It is still unknown what the Ukrainian military command’s plans for its Kursk operation are. However, Kyiv is acting in self-defence, in accordance with the UN Charter article 51.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that Ukrainians shoot from residential areas, use children as human shields, that Kyiv committed genocide in the Donbas and that Ukrainian Nazis used tanks to shoot at Drama Theatre in Mariupol.