All that remained of a Russian border post was a tableau of destruction: Sheet metal flapped in the wind, customs declarations fluttered about, and stray dogs roamed under a road-spanning sign that said, “Russia.”
Kicking up dust, Ukrainian armored vehicles rumbled past, unimpeded, as the flow of men and weaponry carried on in the biggest foreign incursion into Russia since World War II, an offensive now nearing the end of its first week since the breach of the border here in Sudzha and at several other sites.
At the crossing point, a Ukrainian soldier posted on the roadside waved at the forces passing by, days after Russia’s head of the general staff declared that the attack had been rebuffed.
At the border, the detritus of a losing battle — and signs of soldiers caught by surprise — were scattered about: bullet cartridges tinkled underfoot, discarded body armor lay on the asphalt.
Taking the fight to Russian soil was a weighty moment for Ukraine in its war with Russia, coming two and a half years after Russia launched a full-scale invasion and 10 years after Russia intervened militarily to seize territory and support separatist client states in eastern Ukraine.
Within the first month of the war, Ukraine did strike back with a cross-border helicopter assault and has regularly bombarded Russian oil refineries and airfields with a fleet of homemade drones. Two smaller, earlier forays into Russia by Russian exile groups backed by the Ukrainian Army ended in quick retreats.
But until last week, Ukraine forces had not counterattacked into Russia.
Ukrainian troops sliced easily through a thinly defended border, pushing tens of miles into Russia and shifting the narrative of the war after a glum year in which Ukraine had struggled, often in vain, to hold back Russian advances across its eastern front.
By Monday, Ukraine’s commanding general had told President Volodymyr Zelensky that his troops held 390 square miles of territory in Russia’s southeastern Kursk region. Two dozen settlements were overrun.
“I’m happy to be riding a tank into Russia, and it is better than them driving tanks into our country,” said one Ukrainian soldier who was interviewed by The New York Times while squatting atop a tank parked along the supply route for the fighting, a dusty, bustling highway for armored vehicles, fuel trucks and pickups.
Not all the fighting has gone Ukraine’s way. Along the road, flatbeds also hauled damaged, American-made MaxxPro armored vehicles in the opposite direction.
Near the road, several houses had been leveled by Russian aerial bombs, a testament to the ferocious air attacks that have been Russia’s response so far. Where the road passed a high, open plain, plumes of smoke rose from all directions.
Risks abound for Ukraine. The offensive is intended to force Russia to divert troops from a grinding fight in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which has not happened so far, and to gain leverage for peace talks, though none are scheduled.
Whether Ukraine can hold Russian land long enough for these strategic goals remains an open question.
President Vladimir V. Putin has vowed the attack would not soften his negotiating stance. And even as Russia tried to respond to the incursion, its forces have continued to hit Ukrainian forces in the east of that country, officials said on Monday.
But Ukrainian armored columns rumbling into Russia is a remarkable turn in the war.
Ukrainian troops breached the border on Tuesday in a surprise attack that began by clearing paths through minefields. Armored vehicles followed, smashing through the thin defenses of young conscript soldiers and border guards.
The attack on the border post visited by The New York Times, the Sudzha crossing point, an isolated spot in an expanse of farm fields, left a raw scene of ruin just a few hundred miles south of Moscow. The Times went a few hundred yards into Russian territory.
On Monday, about a dozen Ukrainian soldiers, their faces covered with surgical masks, were grunting and cursing as they pulled dead Russian soldiers from a hall with passport control booths, zipping them into body bags.
The now-obliterated border post, despite a few sandbagged gun emplacements, had clearly been unprepared for the tank and artillery assault.
Ukraine had done its own preparations surreptitiously. Thick summer foliage in the oak and maple forests hid heavy weaponry. Ostensible training exercises disguised troop movements. Soldiers had fanned out, sleeping in abandoned homes in villages.
Only at the last moment, according to a deputy Ukrainian brigade commander, were even senior officers told of the offensive. The commander, who asked to be identified only by his first name and rank, Lt. Col. Artem, in keeping with military protocol, said he had summoned subordinate officers to a meeting on a roadside in a forest to make an announcement. They would invade Russia. This was three days before the attack. Rank-and-file soldiers learned only a day before.
“The idea that we would really enter Russian territory seemed to be something unbelievable,” Colonel Artem said.
“There was a very tight limit on those who knew” of the attack plan, Colonel Artem said. Still, as the news moved down the ranks, the army relied on its soldiers’ discretion. The officers did not collect soldiers’ phones, he said, trusting they would keep the secret.
The strategy was to break quickly through border defenses and maneuver on the roads, blocking Russian counterattacks and taking advantage of the rolling, pastoral landscape in this part of Russia that is interspersed with swamps and lakes, limiting Russian opportunities to move off road.
The attack, which has led to the taking of an unspecified number of prisoners and set off a so-far disjointed Russian response put under the command of a domestic intelligence agency rather than the army, has already achieved an objective, Colonel Artem said. “It is a blow to the authority of Russia, which presents itself as a victorious empire,” he said. “But we created a buffer zone inside that country.”
The attack’s secrecy was paramount.
Last year, after the government had telegraphed for months a counteroffensive in southern Ukraine that ultimately failed, a research institute affiliated with the Ministry of Defense studied successful military operations from World War I, World War II, Arab-Israeli wars and other conflicts. It found a common thread: silence by the political leadership until after objectives were achieved.
This week, Ukrainian officials waited days to even acknowledge they had invaded Russia.
“Sharing details, commenting and boasting are only appropriate after the operation is complete,” said Ivan Kyrychevskyi, a military expert for the Ukrainian analytical group Defense Express.
Along the border, the secrecy came at a cost. Unable to warn residents, Ukraine was left scrambling to evacuate them after Russia responded with a bombing campaign in Ukrainian border villages. Ukraine has said it will evacuate 20,000 people living within six miles of the border.
Natalia Vyalina, 44, a kindergarten teacher living in the Ukrainian village of Khotyn, heard tracked vehicles moving on the roads Tuesday morning as the attack got underway. By that afternoon, her village had been bombed. Though she was forced to flee, she approved of Ukraine’s strategy.
“Let them try being occupied, being invaded, to hear how children cry in bomb shelters, to see how the old people suffer,” she said at a shelter for people displaced from the border area.
“I want the war to be over,” said Vera Prostatina, 65, a retired accountant forced from her home. “But now the Russians capture villages and towns. Let this be a lesson to them. The enemy should be punished. They brought war to us and destroyed our lives. Now I want it to be over, for them and for us.”
The fighting is raging over a rural area on both sides of the border, with rolling hills and expansive views of sunflower and wheat fields. In the Ukrainian town of Yunakivka, about five miles from the border, goats grazing on the roadsides looked up, chewing, to watch the Ukrainian military convoys pass.
A few hundred yards inside Russia, the road surface was pocked with craters from mortars. A road sign showing directions to turn toward Ukraine or Russia was peppered with shrapnel. Explosions had peeled back the blue sheet metal of the Russian border post.
Blood stains on the floors and scattered bandages spoke to the Russian soldiers’ losing fight in this spot.
Scenes of Russian routs have surfaced before in the war, north of Kyiv, the capital; in the northeastern Kharkiv region; and the southern Kherson region. But here, Russia faltered on its own soil.
The stern bureaucracy of signs directing people’s actions, seen everywhere in Russia but particularly intimidating for travelers at passport-control points, had become powerless.
An explosion had torn through the passport-control hall. Flat screens dangled from the roof by wires. Outside, rubles fluttered on the roadside, uncollected by the Ukrainians.
Reporting was contributed by Borys Viktjuk from the Sudzha, Russia, border crossing; Yurii Shyvala from Sumy, Ukraine; and Stas Kozliuk and Dzvinka Pinchuk from Kyiv, Ukraine.
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