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17 August 2024

Deception and a Gamble: How Ukrainian Troops Invaded Russia

Kim Barker, Anton Troianovski, Andrew E. Kramer, Constant Méheut, Alina Lobzina, Eric Schmitt and Sanjana Varghese

The scenes were decidedly Russian. A Gazprom facility. Flags with the country’s signature three horizontal stripes of white, blue and red. A Pyatyorochka supermarket.

The soldiers posting the videos, verified by The New York Times, were Ukrainian, almost giddily showing off just how easily they had pushed over the border and through Russian lines of defense in the past week.

In the Russian town of Sverdlikovo, a Ukrainian soldier climbed onto another’s shoulders, broke off the wooden post anchored to a town council building and threw the Russian flag to the ground. In Daryino, a town five miles to the west, other soldiers also grabbed a Russian flag. “Just throw it away,” a Ukrainian soldier said, grinning, as another flexed his muscles.

On Aug. 6, Ukraine launched an audacious military offensive, planned and executed in secrecy, with the aim of upending the dynamics of a war it has appeared to be losing, town by town, as Russian troops have ground forward in the east. The operation surprised even Kyiv’s closest allies, including the United States, and has pushed the limits of how Western military equipment would be permitted to be used inside Russian territory.

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