Ukraine launched rocket and drone attacks as its forces expanded their operation inside Russia’s Kursk region, on the second day of a bold incursion that has forced Moscow to redeploy troops from the Ukrainian front.

Vladimir Putin said the attack, one of the largest since the Russian president launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was a “major provocation”. On Wednesday he accused Kyiv’s forces of “firing indiscriminately” at civilian targets with missiles.

Russian authorities reported 28 residents had been wounded and at least five killed, according to the Tass news agency. Kyiv has not commented on the operation.

The attack comes at a critical moment for Ukraine, which is steadily losing territory to Russia’s larger army, still struggling to replenish and motivate its battered forces and faces a potential collapse in US support if Donald Trump secures a second term as president in November.

Ukrainian units launched the surprise operation on Tuesday morning. Heavy battles continued through the night and on Wednesday.

Kyiv’s forces have since taken control of a handful of villages, shot down aircraft and destroyed military vehicles, according to Russia’s defence ministry. Pro-Kremlin military bloggers, eyewitnesses and videos and photos reviewed by the Financial Times corroborated the reports.

Ukraine has launched cross-border raids into Russia before, using Russian citizens fighting for Kyiv in units operating under the command of Kyiv’s military intelligence directorate, the GUR. But this incursion appears to be more significant in terms of the forces deployed.

“Compared to previous cross-border operations, this one is notable in that it appears to involve Ukrainian conventional forces and not just from GUR,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia programme.

Alexei Smirnov, the region’s acting governor, claimed the situation was “under control” and authorities were evacuating residents from border areas coming under artillery fire.

Smirnov said an unspecified number of civilians had died during the fighting, as well as others who were injured.

Putin said he had ordered officials to organise further aid to local residents and promised to give further orders after meeting with his security cabinet on Wednesday.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had prevented Ukrainian forces from advancing deeper through a series of air strikes and troop deployments at the border.

According to authorities in Ukraine’s Sumy region bordering Kursk, Russian forces had retaliated with aerial attacks on Wednesday. Air defences had downed “a ballistic missile, two UAVs, and one helicopter” over the Sumy region, they said.

Moscow claimed to have destroyed 50 armoured vehicles and killed 260 Ukrainian troops. Kyiv did not comment on its alleged casualties.

Ukrainian troops also took hold of a gas transit station at Sudzha on one of the few remaining pipelines supplying Russian gas to Europe, according to Rybar, a news outlet close to the Russian defence ministry.

Pro-Kremlin accounts on Telegram posted video and drone footage of Sudzha that showed the town had all but been destroyed in the fighting. Sudzha’s mayor told state newswire RIA Novosti that the situation there was “very tense” as locals tried to evacuate.

A Ukrainian official involved in the Kursk operation told the FT that special forces from the security service of Ukraine, the SBU, had “shot down a Russian helicopter using a [first-person view] drone” in what it called a “unique special operation in the history of war”.

A video provided to the FT shows the SBU drone striking the rear propeller of the Russian Mi-28 helicopter as the screen turns black. It is unclear whether the helicopter crashes after the strike.

Separately, Deep State, a Ukrainian analytical group with ties to the defence ministry, said a Russian Ka-52 helicopter involved in the fight had been shot down in Kursk region and shared a photo of it in flames.

One video published by Ukrainian Telegram channels close to the military claimed to show Russian prisoners taken during the operation being marched through a field. Another purported to show interrogations with the captured men.

Some analysts believe Kyiv’s main objective may be to try to force Russia to redeploy forces from eastern Ukraine, where it has made significant gains in recent weeks.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian army major general who is now a senior fellow for Military Studies at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, said another potential motive is political.

“The government of Ukraine want to shift momentum and the strategic narrative, and have directed such an operation,” he said.

The Ukrainian territory captured by Russian troops since early May is nearly double that which Ukraine’s military liberated a year ago, according to research by Pasi Paroinen of the Black Bird Group, an open-source military research group based in Finland.

Mykhailo Zhirokhov, a Ukrainian military analyst, told Kyiv’s Radio NV on Wednesday that the operation in Kursk appears to have forced some Russian units positioned near the Donetsk region city of Siversk to reinforce units to the north.

But other analysts questioned the effectiveness of the Kursk operation at a time when Ukraine’s army is already struggling to defend a frontline that stretches more than 1,000km with limited human and materiel resources.

“Given defensive pressures elsewhere . . . the strategic rationale for this operation at this time is difficult to fathom,” said Ryan, the retired Australian army major general.

Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute said it was unlikely that Ukraine’s brazen incursion would have a significant impact on the course of the war.

“A limited operation might be able to achieve limited goals, but a more ambitious operation carries greater risks.”

Former President Trump reacted Wednesday morning to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz being tapped as Kamala Harris’ running mate, saying he “could not be more thrilled” that the vice president made the “shocking pick.”

“He’s a very, very liberal man, and he’s a shocking pick. I could not be more thrilled,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts during an exclusive interview. 

2024 AD WARS: TRUMP, HARRIS RACE TO DEFINE VICE PRESIDENT

Trump then recalled one of the “only” times he had interacted with him, explaining how Walz reached out to him for help during the pandemic because his house was surrounded by anti-lockdown protesters. 

“They only had one guard, I guess it was at the mansion or his house in some form,” he said. “And he called me and I said, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ I was in the White House. He said, ‘If you would put out the word that I’m a good person, and I did, I put out the word I said, ‘He’s a good person. I hope everything’s good.’ And everybody put down their flags and took their flags with them.”

“But they took the American flags and their MAGA flags and they left it. It was thousands of people,” he continued. 

The former president warned Walz is more radical than Harris on key issues like immigration and crime, as critics worry the Harris-Walz ticket could be the most far-left in the nation’s history. 

“If you look at his record with no walls, no security, let everybody in. He’s worse than they are,” he said. “Nobody knew how radical left she was, but he’s a smarter version of her, if you want to know the truth.”

“There’s never been a ticket like this,” he continued. “This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner. We want no security. We want no anything. He’s very heavy into transgender. Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.”

MEET KAMALA HARRIS’ RUNNING MATE WHO CALLED REPUBLICANS ‘WEIRD PEOPLE’

Harris announced on Tuesday she chose Walz to be her vice presidential running mate, just hours before the pair made their first public appearance together at a campaign rally in Philadelphia. 

“I am proud to announce that I’ve asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate,” Harris officially announced on X. “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his.” 

The naming of the 60-year-old Walz was not a shocker, as his name was instantly thought to be in contention in the two weeks since Harris succeeded President Biden as the party’s standard-bearer.

“This is a shocking pick, and I think it’s very insulting to Jewish people,” Trump said. “And I think it’s very insulting to people that want security. I think it was very insulting to anything having to do with making America great again.”

Walz, a former congressman, is in his second term as governor of Minnesota, a state that Democrats have reliably won in presidential elections for decades but that the Trump campaign has aimed at flipping this cycle.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser, Brooke Singman and Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the Chinese trade myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

China’s export growth missed expectations last month in dollar terms, in what analysts said was a signal to policymakers that their heavy dependence on trade to overcome a weak domestic economy may be facing growing risks.

In contrast to exports, imports rose sharply, reversing previous falls as industry procured machinery and capital goods to sustain rising investment.

Exports rose 7 per cent year on year in dollar terms in July, according to official data released by China’s General Administration of Customs on Wednesday, lower than an 8.6 per cent rise in June. A Reuters poll of analysts had forecast growth of 9.7 per cent.

Imports rose 7.2 per cent, far outpacing the 3.5 per cent growth predicted by the Reuters poll and up from a decline of 2.3 per cent year on year in June.

“[Chinese policymakers] will probably look at this and think the export engine is probably going to slow down sooner than they thought,” said Louise Loo, lead economist at Oxford Economics.

China’s economy has depended on trade and industrial output to offset a prolonged real estate downturn and souring local government finances, which have knocked consumer confidence and household spending.

Investor confidence has also been hit by government crackdowns and Beijing’s insistence on providing only an incremental stimulus, rather than a big bang, to reach its official economic growth target of 5 per cent.

President Xi Jinping has set out a vision of lifting productivity through investment in advanced technology, manufacturing and innovation, with state banks pumping lending into industry rather than stimulating domestic demand.

This has led to disinflationary pressures in the economy, with lower prices supercharging the competitiveness of China’s exports at a time when developed markets are wrestling with higher inflation.

Loo said Chinese industry had probably front-loaded exports in the first part of the year in anticipation of possible tariffs and uncertainty about the US presidential election, as well as weaker external demand as the American economy softens.

“The problem is that the external demand story has never been, in our view, a permanent driver, it was always going to fade,” she said. “It’s just about timing the end of that boom.”

Heron Lim, an economist with Moody’s Analytics, said July’s weaker than expected export figure could be partly down to rising trade protectionism hitting Chinese products, including automobiles.

This was happening not only in developed markets such as the US and the EU, which have increased tariffs on electric vehicles, but also across different products and developing countries.

“We are definitely expecting more to come in terms of stimulus,” he said, pointing to expectations of monetary easing and other measures in the second half of the year.

However, Lynn Song, chief economist for greater China at ING, noted that exports increased in volume terms, particularly in areas such as automobiles, while prices were lower.

“I think the disappointing export data is actually more tied to price competition,” he said, adding that some areas showed stronger activity, such as household electronics and semiconductor exports.

“It’s not a broad-based, big external demand slowdown,” he said, adding “export value has slumped and that’s probably dragging on the numbers a bit.”

Song also pointed out that imports were being driven by demand for auto parts from electric vehicle industries, as well as by China’s drives to upgrade industry and achieve technological self-sufficiency.

“There’s quite a lot of demand for high tech imports, semiconductors as well as automatic data processing equipment,” he said.

“I think one mistake would be to attribute [the import rebound] to a really strong recovery of household demand, because you can see that overall other imports are still quite weak.”