Ukraine kept its plans for an incursion in Russia's Kursk Region secret, the deputy spokesman for the German government has said. Wolfgang Buchner claimed on Monday that none of Kiev’s backers had been informed in advance about Ukraine’s plan to attack Russian territory.
“There is contradictory and sometimes deliberately distorted information about the operation, which was apparently prepared very secretly and without feedback,” Buchner said at a press briefing.
He did not condemn or otherwise appraise the situation, saying only that “everything so far looks like a spatially limited operation.” However, he noted that details were still unclear and therefore “it would be unwise to make a public statement.”
Buchner said Berlin would be in close contact with “all partners, including the government in Kiev” in relation to the incursion.
When asked whether Ukraine was using weapons supplied by Germany in the operation, Buchner said Berlin did not have sufficient information to comment. However, a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry separately clarified that there was nothing stopping Kiev from using the weapons supplied by Germany on Russian soil.
“International law stipulates that a defending state may also defend itself on the territory of the attacker… There are no obstacles whatsoever and Ukraine is free to choose its options,” he stated.
The same position was set out by Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) chairman Lars Klingbeil, who defended Ukraine’s “right to defend itself” by encroaching on Russian territory using Western-supplied weapons.
“That is what is happening right now, it is part of a war. You can find that brutal, we all want peace, but we are also consciously saying that Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” he asserted. He noted, however, that Kiev’s reasons for the incursion remain unclear.
“We will certainly hear more in the next few days whether it is about getting Russia to the negotiating table quickly, as some suspect, or whether it is about causing unrest on the Russian side,” the politician stated.
Kiev’s incursion in Kursk Region, which was launched on August 6, is its largest attack on Russian territory since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022. The Russian military earlier reported that the advance by Kiev’s forces into the country’s territory has been halted.