Ukraine said on Tuesday it had no interest in occupying territory in Russia’s Kursk region and that its major cross-border incursion would complicate Russian military logistics and its ability to send more units to fight in Ukraine’s east.

The comments by the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s spokesman come a week after Kyiv’s forces launched a cross-border assault into the western Russian region of Kursk that Ukraine says has seen its forces take control of 1,000 square kilometers of land.

“Unlike Russia, Ukraine does not need other people’s property. Ukraine is not interested in taking the territory of the Kursk region, but we want to protect the lives of our people,” Heorhii Tykhyi, the spokesman, told reporters in Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Russia has used the Kursk region to launch more than two thousand cross-border strikes on Ukrainian territory since June and that Ukrainian forces have captured areas used to launch such strikes during the incursion.

(Reuters)