“The main task, of course, is for the defence ministry to squeeze out, to knock out the enemy from our territories,” Putin said, adding that Russian forces were accelerating their advance along the rest of the 1000-km (620-mile) main front.
“The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response,” he said.
He also said he expected further Ukrainian attempts to destabilise Russia’s Western border.
Russian officials say Ukraine is trying to show its Western backers that it can still muster major military operations just as pressure mounts on both Kyiv and Moscow to agree to talk about halting the war.
Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s security council, said last week that Russia had taken 420 square km (162 square miles) of territory from Ukrainian forces since June 14.
But Ukraine has just managed to carve out a comparable amount of territory. The acting governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, said Ukraine controlled 28 settlements in the region, and the incursion was about 12km deep and 40km wide.
Trump has said he would end the war, and both Russia and Ukraine are keen to gain the strongest possible bargaining position on the battlefield.
01:47
Ukraine says it’s ready to resume ‘good faith’ negotiations with Russia
Ukraine says it’s ready to resume ‘good faith’ negotiations with Russia
Kyiv says it is the victim of an imperial-style land grab by Putin and says it must gain control over all the land it has lost to Russia. The West says it cannot allow Putin to win.
Putin, in his June 14 speech, cast the war as part of a historic struggle with an arrogant West, which he said had ignored Russia’s security concerns after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and plotted to dismember Russia.
Such a audacious attack against the world’s biggest nuclear power was embarrassing for Putin’s top military brass, which has repeatedly been criticised inside Russia by nationalists for its prosecution of the war.
Former Ukrainian defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told Reuters that the operation looked aimed at distracting Russian forces and its leadership from the eastern fronts.
By Sunday, Russia had stabilised the front in the Kursk region, though it had been forced to mobilise reserves and declare an anti-terrorist lockdown in Kursk and two other regions, Bryansk and Belgorod.
“Our armed forces are moving forward along the entire line of contact,” Putin said.
Reuters has been unable to verify battlefield claims.
02:58
China rejects Nato claim of being ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia in Ukraine war
China rejects Nato claim of being ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia in Ukraine war
In Belgorod to the south, thousands of civilians were evacuated from the Krasnaya Yaruga District amid fears of a Ukrainian attack.
Russia’s most senior general, chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov, told Putin on Wednesday that the Ukrainian offensive had been halted in the border area.
Russian bloggers have questioned why Ukraine was able to pierce the Kursk region so easily, and why it took so long to stabilise the situation.
Ukrainian forces in Kursk were trying to encircle Sudzha, where Russian natural gas flows into Ukraine, while major battles were under way near Korenevo, about 22km (14 miles) from the border, and Martynovka.
Since the August 6 border incursion into Kursk, the Russian rouble has weakened, losing 6 per cent of its value against the US dollar. Russia’s Gazprom said it would send 39.6 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Monday.