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Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Russia's southwestern Belgorod Oblast declared a state of emergency Wednesday across the entire region as Kyiv intensified its attacks on Russian territory amid a fast developing ground offensive along its border with Ukraine. Gov. Viacheslav Gladkov said he had made the decision to deal with the "extremely difficult" situation created by constant shelling by Ukrainian forces of the border region that had injured civilians and caused widespread damage.
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"The situation in the Belgorod Region remains extremely complicated and tense. The armed forces of Ukraine shell it on a daily basis, with homes destroyed and casualties reported among civilians," he said in a video message posted on his Telegram channel.
"That is why, starting from today, the entire territory of the Belgorod Region will be declared an area of a regional-level emergency, for the purpose of providing additional protection and support to its population."
Gladkov added he would request a governmental commission to declare an emergency at the federal level.
He detailed drone attacks and artillery bombardment of 25 urban areas and villages including the city of Shebekino 18 miles southeast of the regional capital where at least one person was seriously injured after his vehicle was hit, an apartment building partially collapsed after repeated drone strikes and gas lines were damaged.
Elsewhere, dozens of houses as well as municipal builidings, energy infrastructure and cars were destroyed or damaged.
In Krasnoyaruzhsky district, from which Gladkov ordered 14,000 people to evacuate Monday due to ground maneuvers by Ukrainian troops, ammunition and drones were fired at the village of Krasnaya Yaruga, as well as the villages of Kolotilovka and Repyakhovka where the administrative building burned down and the power supply line was damaged.
The area in the northwest of Belgorod is about 38 miles southeast of Sudzha in the Kursk region where a major incursion by Ukrainian ground forces is in its eighth day.
The Krasnoyaruzhsky district capital, Krasnaya Yaruga, is just 10.5 miles from Kolotilovka village on the border with Ukraine where Ukrainian mobile units stormed the frontier post Monday.
Further to the east, at least seven houses were damaged in the Alexeyevsky urban district, more than 60 miles inside Russian territory, according to Gladkov.
The Kursk region declared a state of emergency on Aug. 8 after evacuating thousands of residents from areas near the border with Ukraine in response to a surprise incursion by Ukrainian mechanized units launched two days earlier.
Russia's defense ministry on Wednesday rejected claims by Kyiv that its forces were in control of at least 380 square miles of Russian territory, saying that Ukrainian troops and equipment were very thinly spread.
Akhmat Special Forces Commander Maj. Gen. Apty Alaudinov, while acknowledging Ukrainian forces were in control of some settlements in the Kursk region, said "the number of enemy troops or means there is scarce" and insisted fighting for the border town of Sudzha was ongoing.
"There are units from the Russian Defense Ministry, too, in Sudzha now, as the enemy is in and around certain parts of the town. Active fighting has been taking place daily there. The enemy cannot claim full control of Sudzha because they [Ukrainian troops] do not actually control it," the state-run TASS news agency reported Alaudinov as telling Channel One television.
"They think that if 20 to 30 Ukrainian fighters have entered a locality they can claim control of it. But it can be under their control until we start squeezing the enemy out of our land. And we will certainly go beyond that."
Russia also claimed its forces were in control of the Belovsky district in the southeastern corner of Kursk two days after the local urged residents to leave amid what he called a "very tense" situation due to the arrival of Ukrainian units in the area on Sunday.
"The district administration and the Russian Armed Forces are in control of the situation in the district. There are no signs of panic," Nikolay Volobuyev said in an apparent about-face from his earlier position.
"Municipal authorities are working to keep life going in the district," Volobuyev said, adding efforts to evacuate local residents were continuing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday reprimanded local leaders for using emotive language about the impact of the incursion and commenting out of turn on the tactical state of play on the ground in their areas which he said only the defense ministry was authorized to speak to.
At least 134,000 people in the Kursk and Belgorod regions have been ordered to flee the Ukrainian advance.
