Russian President Vladimir Putin is continuing to blame the West for his nation’s difficulties subduing opposition forces in Ukraine.
The Russian president told regional governors and national defense officials on Monday that the Ukrainian military’s current campaign in the territory of the Kursk region will not affect negotiations.
“The West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians,” Putin told them at his home outside the capital city of Moscow, according to a report from The New York Times.
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“The enemy will certainly get the response he deserves, and all our goals, without doubt, will be accomplished,” he continued.
Ukraine launched incursions into the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk districts last week, continuing the campaign since last Tuesday.
The events have put the Russian military command under fire over the intelligence and tactical lapses that allowed such an attack to happen.
“One of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society,” Putin told government officials in a televised meeting this week, according to the Moscow Times. “The main task is, of course, for the defense ministry to dislodge the enemy from our territories.”
Experts attribute the Ukrainian gains to “unconventional” tactics that have caught the much larger Russian military off-guard.
“Given the significant disparity of combat potential favoring Russia on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces appear to be switching to, or at minimum, intensifying, unconventional warfare, bringing war deeper into Russia,” Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and author of “Putin’s Playbook,” told Fox News Digital last week.
“With the latest surprise incursion into Kursk oblast, Zelenskyy likely aims to demonstrate to Putin that as long as there’s no peace in Ukraine, the Russian people will not sleep peacefully either,” Koffler said. “Kyiv is probably also seeking to beef up its negotiating position in a potential peace settlement with Moscow.”
Approximately 121,000 people have evacuated the Kursk region — residents of the Belovsky and Krasnoyaruzhsky districts have also joined the exodus.
Ukraine has been the beneficiary of tens of billions of dollars from Western powers providing weapons and resources in order to push back against Russian expansion through the remote conflict.
Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken and Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.