Live updates: Ukraine’s incursion into Russia

Ukrainian officials have been expanding on what they see as a “buffer zone” inside Russia, which they say will protect better communities in northern Ukraine.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Wednesday that during “this summer alone, the Russians launched more than 2,000 strikes on the territory of Sumy region. They used missiles, artillery, UAVs, attack drones, and mortars.”

Klymenko said more than 20,000 people had been evacuated. Sumy shares a long border with Russian territory. 

He also said that Russian civilians in parts of the Kursk region now controlled by the Ukrainian military “were abandoned by Russia without the most necessary things.” The Ukrainian military is coordinating with his ministry on “the needs of the locals for drinking water, food, medicines and hygiene kits so that we can organize humanitarian aid as soon as possible…”

Volodymyr Artiukh, the head of Sumy regional military administration, told Ukrainian television Wednesday there had been “an increase in the enemy’s use of aviation in recent days.

The Russian defense ministry had previously said that its aviation was attacking Ukrainian reserves in Sumy.

Artiukh said that authorities were enforcing an exclusion zone of 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) from the border.

“This is done to avoid endangering the civilian population. There are cases when citizens return after leaving,” he said.