Russian forces have captured the village of Basivka in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, Moscow’s Ministry of Defence has claimed.
The ministry said that Russian forces had defeated several Ukrainian army formations near three border settlements—Gornal, Guevo, and Oleshnya—in the neighboring region of Kursk.
Russia’s western Kursk region, into which Ukrainian forces staged a brazen cross-border offensive last summer, shares a roughly 150-mile-long border with Sumy.
Ukrainian officials have denied Moscow’s claims that Russian forces had decisively taken the village of Basivka.
“As of today, the Russians do not control Basivka in Sumy region,” Andriy Kovalenko, an official of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, wrote on the Telegram messaging platform on the evening of April 6.
“They [Russian forces] are trying to run in there in assault groups ... in order to gain a foothold, but the enemy is being destroyed,” Kovalenko said. “The fighting in the Sumy region border area is complex and continues daily in several areas, and is also taking place in the Kursk border area.”
The Epoch Times could not independently verify claims made by either side.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops deployed in Sumy, where he said Kyiv’s military was “working to protect our positions.”
Buffer Zone
Last summer, Kyiv carried out a surprise cross-border offensive into Kursk, where Ukrainian forces initially captured several hundred square miles of Russian territory.Over the past eight months, they have largely been forced to retreat from the region in the face of continued Russian counterattacks.
The source said that fierce battles remained underway on either side of the border, both in Kursk’s Geuvo settlement and near the village of Basivka in Sumy.
In past remarks, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Russian forces carve out a “buffer zone” along the border—to include parts of Ukraine’s Sumy region—to prevent future Ukrainian incursions into Kursk.
In mid-February, Putin said that elements from the Russian army’s 810th Brigade had already begun crossing the border from Kursk into neighboring Sumy.
During a surprise visit to Kursk last month, the Russian leader said Moscow’s priority was to “completely liberate the territory of the Kursk region and to restore the situation along the line of the state border.”
Addressing Russian troops deployed in the region, he said, “And of course, we need to think about creating a security zone along the state border.”
According to Russian military expert Andrey Marochko, the recently reported capture of Basivka will allow Russian forces to advance on the nearby Ukrainian towns of Loknya and Yunakivka, thereby cutting Kyiv’s supply lines in Sumy.
Marochko said that Russian operations in Sumy served to achieve several tactical aims, including “disrupting Ukrainian logistics, dividing their attention, and reducing pressure on our operations elsewhere.”
