Ukraine didn’t tell allies about Kursk because they would have called it “unrealistic”: Zelenskyy

“Now the real success speaks for itself: our active defensive actions on the other side of the border and Putin’s inability to protect his territory from our defensive actions of this kind are very telling,” he continued, referring to the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine’s allies were not the only ones unaware of the attack. The planned invasion was kept so well secret that even the Ukrainian soldiers were not informed until the last moment.

“We joked that it wasn’t April 1. The commander just smiled, knowing we had no idea what was coming,” a Ukrainian soldier identified only by his first name, Serhiy, said of the orders to invade Russia, The Economist reported. Sunday.

Russian forces were caught off guard when Ukraine launched a shock offensive in the Kursk region on August 6. The surprise attack resulted in significant gains for Ukraine on the battlefield.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military, said last week that Ukraine had captured nearly 400 square miles of Russian territory in just a few days. That’s close to the amount of Ukrainian territory that was seized by the Russians this year.

“When our Ukrainian defenders act like this, decisively and courageously, and when the operation is really well prepared, Putin has no choice. And now the world sees that it is realistic, that it really works,” Zelenskyi said on Monday, per Pravda.

Representatives of Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.