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By Andrew E. Kramer
Photographs via David Guttenfelder
Reported from the Sudzha border checkpoint in Russia
All that remains of a Russian border post is a picture of destruction: sheets of steel flapping in the wind, customs declarations fluttering and stray dogs wandering under a road sign that read “Russia. ”
Kicking up dust, Ukrainian armored vehicles passed unimpeded, as men and weapons continued the largest foreign incursion into Russia since World War II, an offensive that is now nearing the end of its first week since the breach of the border here. in several other places.
At the crossing point, a Ukrainian soldier stationed on the side of the road waved to passing forces, days after the Russian leader said the attack had been repelled.
On the border, the remnants of a lost war – and the symptoms of the infantrymen – were scattered: shell casings rattled underfoot, discarded bulletproof vests lay on the asphalt.
Taking combat to Russian soil was a significant moment for Ukraine in its war against Russia, which came two and a half years after Russia introduced a full-scale invasion and 10 years after Russia intervened militarily to capture separatist territory and consumer states in eastern Ukraine. . .
In the first month of the war, Ukraine retaliated with a cross-border helicopter attack and bombed Russian oil refineries and airfields with a fleet of homemade drones. Two smaller incursions into Russia through teams of subsidized Russian exiles through the Ukrainian military ended in immediate withdrawals. .
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