Tens of thousands of people are being evacuated from Russia's Kursk region, which Ukrainian forces have invaded. The acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, stated on Sunday on the messaging app Telegram that he had "instructed" the head of the region's Belovsky district, which is located in the southwest of Kursk, to "speed up" the execution of the evacuation orders.

The extent of the civilian evacuations from nearby towns and villages into the war zone was described by local officials. An official from the regional emergency situations ministry was quoted by the state-run TASS news agency as saying at a press briefing that "more than 76,000 people have been temporarily relocated to safe places."

On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the head of Kyiv's efforts to restore justice following Russia's invasion in 2022, made his first admission that Ukrainian forces were engaged in combat in the Kursk area of Russia. The president of Ukraine had hitherto said nothing concerning the operation.

He said he had talked about the operation with Oleksandr Syrskyi, the top Ukrainian commander, "and our actions and pushing the war into the aggressor's territory" in his speech on Saturday night. "Ukraine is proving that it can really bring justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed-pressure on the aggressor," he continued, thanking the soldiers engaged.

According to regional officials on Sunday, debris from a downed missile launched from Ukraine struck a nine-story residential building in Kursk, injuring at least 13 people. Igor Kutsak, the mayor of Kursk, announced that building occupants would be moved to a centre for interim housing. He said there were alerts for air raids across the entire city.

On the fifth day of the onslaught into Kursk, the Russian defence ministry declared that it has stopped Ukraine from moving forward. Dan Sabbagh reports. Three villages, Ivashkovskoye, Malaya Loknya, and Olgovka, which are seven to eleven miles from the international border and are comparable to the areas where Ukraine was previously thought to have advanced, were reported to be the scene of fighting. Kursk and two other oblasts, Bryansk and Belgorod, were placed under a "counter-terrorism" regime by Russia's FSB domestic security agency, which gave the authorities broad authority to impose communication restrictions and lock down areas.

Less than 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the conflict, the Kursk nuclear power facility was directly threatened, according to a warning sent by Russia's nuclear agency on Saturday. According to official news media, Rosatom, the atomic energy organisation of Russia, stated that "the actions of the Ukrainian army pose a direct threat" to the Kursk plant in western Russia. There was no proof that the plant was in danger from Ukrainian soldiers. The International Atomic Energy Agency's director advocated for "maximum restraint" on Friday.