The White House offered Putin a way to stop the Kursk invasion: ‘Get the hell out of Ukraine’

President Vladimir Putin appears to have been caught off-guard by Ukraine’s attack on Kursk.

Artem Geodakyan/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

• The White House clapped back at Putin over Ukraine’s shock incursion into Russia.
• Russia is scrambling to respond to Ukraine seizing swathes of its Kursk region.
• The US and other Ukrainian allies have been unsympathetic to Russian complaints about the attack.

The White House offered a blunt response to President Vladimir Putin on Monday amid Ukraine’s ongoing attack on the Russian region of Kursk.

National security communications advisor John Kirby said on Monday that if Ukraine’s incursion into the western Russian region of Kursk makes Putin uncomfortable, “there’s an easy solution: He can just get the hell out of Ukraine and call it a day.”

It is now more than a week since Ukrainian forces launched a surprise attack on the region.

While much is unknown about the full extent of the incursion, a top Ukrainian general said Tuesday that their forces had captured some 390 square miles of Russian territory.

The incursion appears to have caught Russia off guard, with regional officials saying Ukraine seized 28 settlements along the border, and causing more than 120,000 people to flee.

On Monday, Kirby’s remarks came in response to a question about earlier remarks by Putin, in which he accused the West of “waging war against us using Ukrainians” in the shock incursion into Kursk, as Russian state-controlled media reported.

It’s unclear if the White House had prior knowledge of the attack. Last week, spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre suggested it did not, saying it was planning to reach out to Kyiv to learn more about its objectives.

The US and other Ukrainian allies have been blunt in their responses to Russian complaints about the incursion.

Earlier in the week a State Department spokesperson said it was “a little bit rich” for Russia to complain of an attack on its territory when it was deep into the invasion of Ukraine.

European officials have said Ukraine has the “legitimate right” to counterattack on Russian soil.