MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/. The Ukrainian armed forces' attack on Russia's Kursk Region is presumably an attempt to pull Russian troops out of the Kharkov Region, although there is no need to transfer them, the head of the region’s military-civilian administration, Vitaly Ganchev, told Channel One.
"It is logical to assume that [the Ukrainian sortie in the Kursk Region] is a diversionary maneuver, because we see what is happening in our direction and specifically in Volchansk, near Liptsy, in the entire northern territory of the Kharkov Region, including in the Kupyansk area, where Ukrainian armed formations do not have any tactical success. They are constantly trying to attack our positions, suffering heavy losses and retreating. Therefore, it is easy to assume that they now need to pull our reserves elsewhere in order to regain the positions they lost earlier, in May. Ukrainian armed formations have no successes in the northern territories of the Kharkov Region, so we can say that our guys are well entrenched there and there is no need to pull back these forces," he said.
The official pointed out that "now large reserves are approaching only from the Ukrainian side on a permanent basis." "If we abandon the Kharkov front now, the buffer zone that was created will be lost again. Our fighters are holding these positions and will not retreat from them," Ganchev said.
According to him, a lot of mercenaries have appeared in this direction in the last month. "Our residents hear Western speech, mainly French. This (the increase in the number of mercenaries on the side of the Ukrainian armed forces - TASS) is most likely due to the large losses [of the Ukrainian military], and they still cannot compensate for these losses through mobilization, which means that no one wants to go and die for the Kiev regime now," Ganchev added.
Volchansk remains in an extremely difficult situation, he pointed out, adding that there are positional battles, and the residential area has been seriously destroyed. The northern part of the city is controlled by the Russian military, while the southern part is still occupied by the Ukrainian armed forces.