A federal emergency has been declared in Russia’s Kursk Region amid a cross-border incursion by Ukrainian forces, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has said.

Kiev’s troops launched their largest attack on Russian territory since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in Kursk Region’s Sudzha district on Tuesday. The Russian military said on Wednesday that the advance of the invading force had been halted but that Ukrainians remained in some areas in the district.

“The situation in the Kursk region was classified as a federal emergency,” an Emergencies Ministry statement said on Friday.

The decision to impose “a federal level of response” in the region was made during an extraordinary meeting of a government commission in charge of dealing with emergency situations and of ensuring fire safety, the statement read.

The ‘federal emergency’ level will allow those who had their relatives killed, were wounded themselves or had their property damaged as a result of the Ukrainian incursion to receive compensation from the Russian state, it also pointed out.

The ministry said that it continues deliveries of humanitarian aid to Kursk Region, with 35 tons of food, ten tons of drinking water and ten power stations already supplied.

A total of 25 temporary facilities have been set up in the region, currently accommodating more than 2,000 people, including 520 children, it added.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that over the past 24 hours Russian warplanes and artillery struck Ukrainian troops near the settlements of Daryino, Gogolevka, Melovoy and Nikolsky, as well as and on the western outskirts of Sudzha town.

In the area of the Yuzhny settlement, five US-made Stryker armored personnel carriers operated by Kiev forces were destroyed in an airstrike, according to the ministry. Near the village of Martynovka, a Ukrainian column consisting of a tank, four armored personnel carriers and a Kozak combat armored vehicle, was also struck by Russian warplanes, it reported.

Overall, Ukraine has lost 945 servicemen and 102 armored vehicles since the start of the incursion, the ministry said. “The operation to destroy the Ukrainian military units continues,” it pointed out.

On Wednesday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin described the cross-border attack as a “massive provocation” by Kiev, blaming the Ukrainian troops of “indiscriminately firing various types of weapons, including missiles, at civilian facilities, residential buildings, and ambulances.”

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