*

      Ukraine strikes Russia with drones

        *

      Intense battles underway in Russia's Kursk region  

        *

      Nearly 200,000 Russians evacuated

        *

      One of the biggest incursions into Russia in decades

(Adds Russian defence ministry details, context on previous

incursions into Russia)

    By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly

       MOSCOW, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Russian forces on Tuesday

struck back at Ukrainian troops with missiles, drones and

airstrikes in actions that one senior commander said had halted

Ukraine's advance after the biggest attack on sovereign Russian

territory since the war began.

    Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through the Russian

border a week ago in a surprise attack that Russian President

Vladimir Putin said was aimed at improving Kyiv's negotiating

position ahead of possible talks and slowing the advance of

Russian forces along the front.

    The Ukrainian forces carved out a slice of Russian

territory, prompting Moscow to evacuate almost 200,000 people

while it rushed in reserves.

    Russian war bloggers reported intense battles across the

Kursk front as the Ukrainians tried to expand their control,

though they said Russia was bringing in soldiers and heavy

weaponry and had repelled many Ukrainian attacks.

    Russia's defence ministry published images of Sukhoi Su-34

bombers striking at what it said were Ukrainian troops in the

Kursk border region and said it had repelled attacks at villages

about 26-28 km (16-17 miles) from the border.

    Russian forces had destroyed a total of 35 Ukrainian tanks,

31 armoured personnel carriers, 18 infantry fighting vehicles,

and 179 other armoured vehicles during in the week-long battle,

it said.

    "The uncontrolled ride of the enemy has already been

halted," said Major General Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the

Chechen Akhmat special forces unit. "The enemy is already aware

that the blitzkrieg that it planned did not work out."

    It was not clear which side was in control of the Russian

town of Sudzha, through which Russia delivers gas from Western

Siberia through Ukraine and on to Slovakia and other European

Union countries. Gazprom said Tuesday it was still pumping gas

to Ukraine through Sudzha.

    Kursk's acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said on Monday that

Ukraine controlled 28 settlements in the region, and the

incursion was about 12 km deep and 40 km wide. Ukraine claimed

it controlled 1,000 square km (386 square miles) of Russian,

more than double what the Russian figures indicate.

    After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western

leaders said they would help Ukraine defeat Russian troops on

the battlefield and drive them out.

    Ukraine recaptured large swathes of territory in 2022. But

its counteroffensive in 2023 failed to pierce heavily dug-in  

Russian lines, and Russian forces have been advancing this year

deeper into Ukrainian territory. Russia controls just under one

fifth of territory internationally recognised as Ukraine.

    PUTIN PLEDGE

    At his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Putin told

officials that Russia would force out the Ukrainian troops,

saying Russian forces were speeding up their advance along other

parts of the front.

    Still, the foreign occupation of Russian land was an

embarrassment for the army and for Putin. The Ukrainian

incursion is the most serious into Russia since the June 1941

invasion by Nazi Germany, which turned on the 1943 Battle of

Kursk.

    President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in his nightly

address that the operation in Russia was a matter of Ukrainian

security and the Kursk region had been used by Russia to launch

many strikes against Ukraine.

    But by dedicating forces to Kursk, Ukraine may leave other

parts of the front exposed just as Russia has been advancing.

Russia which has a far larger army, could try to encircle

Ukrainian forces.

    Ukraine's Western backers, which have been keen to avoid an

escalation of the war into a direct confrontation between Russia

and the U.S.-led NATO, said they had no prior warning of the

Ukrainian offensive.

    Putin said the West was using Ukraine to fight a proxy war

with Russia and the border incursion was an attempt to undermine

Russian domestic stability.

    Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said Zelenskiy

was taking crazy steps that risked an escalation far beyond

Ukraine's borders.

    In Kursk, 121,000 people had already left or have been

evacuated and another 59,000 were in the process of being

evacuated, local officials said. In Russia's Belgorod region,

which borders Kursk, 11,000 civilians were also evacuated, the

region's governor said.

(Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Guy Faulconbridge in

Moscow; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Angus MacSwan)

((lidia.kelly@thomsonreuters.com;))