President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Kyiv's incursion into Russia's Kursk region will not stop Moscow's advance in east Ukraine and vowed to deal with Ukrainian "bandits" there.
Ukraine's surprise August 6 incursion into Russia has displaced around 130,000 people and seen Kyiv hold on to parts of the border Kursk region.
Moscow has since continued to press into east Ukraine, resisting pulling troops from occupied Ukraine towards Kursk.
"Their calculation was to stop our offensive actions in key parts of the Donbas. The result is known... They did not achieve stopping our advance in the Donbas," Putin told schoolchildren in Siberia.
"The result is clear. Yes, people are going through difficult experiences, especially in the Kursk region. But the main aim that the enemy had -- to stop our offensive in Donbas -- it did not achieve," Putin said.
He added Moscow is seeing advances at a "rate that we did not have for a long time."
Kyiv has said one of its aims of going into Kursk was to stretch the Russian army and force it to pull reserves from east Ukraine.
"We have to of course deal with these bandits that entered the territory of the Russian Federation, specifically the Kursk region, attempting to destabilise the situation in the border areas," Putin said.
The Russian leader's language was a break from previous statements on the incursion, which he had described as "the situation that has evolved".
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