How many towns and villages have Ukraine liberated in Kursk?

Vladimir Putin was furious about the governor of the Kursk region stating that Ukraine controls 28 settlements, and the zone that Ukrainians control is 12 km deep and 40 km wide, during a public live stream of Russia’s Security Council meeting. 

“Leave the numbers to the military,” barked Putin.

From the start of the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region on August 6, the Kremlin tried to downplay the huge issue that the Russian army was facing in trying to defend its territory.

Putin and Co. obviously hoped that this incursion was just a raid like the ones taken in 2023 by anti-Putin “Russian Volunteer Corps” (made of Russian citizens who fight on the side of Ukraine) — the units would enter the territory of Russia in small groups, take over a village or 2, make photos for PR, and then quickly retreat.

This is why when the Ukrainian troops invaded the Kursk region on August 6, a decision was made in the Kremlin to treat it as another annoying but harmless “provocation”.

That decision was a huge mistake, which Putin and his generals are surely regretting by now — because Ukraine brought across the border thousands of troops, including sabotage groups with Russian documents, who by now crossed further into Russia.

Putin must be terrified of what the Ukrainians might be really planning.

Shoigu and Gerasimov didn’t look particularly upbeat at the meeting with Putin — especially Shoigu looked like a dead man sitting. Which, according to many sources, he probably is. Most of Shoigu’s former deputies are fired or arrested on charges of major theft and corruption, and 2 of them have already “suddenly died”.

The Kursk operation began soon after Ukraine got its first F-16s, which it has already been successfully using — a week ago, loaded Russian bombers had to turn around without firing the cruise missiles into Ukraine, obviously because the missiles would be shot down by F-16s, so the commanders decided not to waste the precious cruise missiles (Russia can produce only a few of them per month and they are exorbitantly expensive) — and rather return to base, to plan the attack differently.

Also yesterday, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy and his Commander in Chief Syrskyi (who participated in the briefing via a video link) for the first time provided an official information to the public on the operation in the Kursk region.

Syrskyi announced that Ukraine now controls and occupies around 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory — which is double the area that the governor of the Kursk region admitted.

It’s worth noting that previously the newly appointed Russia’s minister of defence Andrei Belousov stated that Russia captured 850 square kilometers of the Ukrainian territory in 2024.

As we know, these Russian advances in Ukraine came at the cost of over 200,000 personnel in losses (killed, maimed, and missing).

Ukraine managed to capture a larger territory in Russia in just a week — with losses nowhere close to that number (Russia claims that Ukraine lost over 1,000 men in the Kursk offensive, but this is likely an exaggerated figure).

Meanwhile, DeepState reports that not 28, but about 44 Russian settlements are already under the control of Ukraine, and the status of another 10 is unknown.

The watchful viewers noticed the notes that Putin used to read his speech:

The handwritten notes have giant letters — Putin is obviously scared to do a laser correction on his eyes, and doesn’t want to wear glasses or lenses.

According to Moscow Times, Ukrainian troops advanced already by nearly 30 km into the Kursk region and begun to strike at bridges.

But Putin’s generals insist that they have managed to “stabilize the situation”.

The 26th year of Putin’s “stability” started really well.