by Mac Slavo, SHTF Plan:

President Putin has continued to downplay Ukraine’s major Kursk invasion, which has resulted in Russian territory occupied by Kiev forces, and has instead maintained that capturing and holding all the Donbas in eastern Ukraine remains the goal.

“We have to deal with these thugs who made it into Russia,” he said at an event while visiting Russia’s east on Thursday. He’s yet to launch a broader general mobilization despite the assault on Kursk and the border region.

He presented the Kursk operation as essentially a trap which he will not fall into. “The aim of the enemy [in Kursk] was to force us to worry, hustle, divert troops and to stop our offensive in key areas, especially in the Donbas, the liberation of which is our main primary objective,” Putin described at a forum in Vladivostok.