2.The plan was similar to Ukraine's cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, in August 2024, launched in part in a bid to prevent Russian forces from staging an attack on Sumy Oblast, which was carried out under the command of his successor, Oleksandr Syrskyi.Ukrainian troops seized around 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles) of Russian territory, though Kyiv has reportedly since lost roughly half of those gains. Clashes continue in the area with Russian forces bolstered by North Korean troops."The idea was to conduct an offensive on Russian territory, in the general direction somewhere at the junction of Kursk and Belgorod oblasts, toward Belgorod. A political decision was all that was needed," Nazarov told the BBC. Zaluzhnyi reportedly advocated for a strategy of encirclement or blockade aimed at cutting off the Russian military’s ability to carry out fire and missile strikes on Kharkiv.