An influential aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the West and the US-led NATO alliance had helped to plan Ukraine's surprise attack on Russia's Kursk region, something Washington has denied.
The lightning incursion, the biggest into Russia by a foreign power since World War Two, unfurled on Aug. 6 when thousands of Ukrainian troops crossed Russia's western border in a major embarrassment for Putin's military.
Ukraine said the incursion was needed to force Russia, which sent its forces into Ukraine in 2022, to start "fair" peace talks.
But the United States and Western powers, eager to avoid direct military confrontation with Russia, said Ukraine had not given advance notice and that Washington was not involved, though weaponry provided by Britain and the UdeS is reported to have been used on Russian soil.
Influential veteran Kremlin hawk Nikolai Patrushev dismissed the Western assertions in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper.
"The operation in the Kursk region was also planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services," he was quoted as saying, without offering evidence, Reuters reported.
"Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory."
The remarks implied that Ukraine's first acknowledged foray into sovereign Russian territory carried a high risk of escalation.
Putin chaired a meeting of Russia's Security Council, including Patrushev, and said the discussion would focus on "new technical solutions" being employed in the military operation.
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"Washington's efforts have created all the prerequisites for Ukraine to lose its sovereignty and lose part of its territories," Patrushev said.
Ukraine said on Thursday that it had installed a military commandant in the area it controlled, even as Russia intensified its offensives in Ukraine's east.
Russia's defense ministry for its part said it had repelled a series of Ukrainian attacks along the Kursk frontline.
While the Ukrainian attack has revealed weaknesses in Russian defenses and changed the public narrative of the conflict, Russian officials said Ukraine's "terrorist invasion" would not change the course of the war.
Russia has been advancing for most of the year in the key eastern sector of the 1,000-km (620-mile) front and has vast numerical superiority. It controls 18% of Ukraine.
After more than 10 days of fighting, Ukraine holds at least 450 sq km (175 sq miles) of territory, or less than 0.003% of Russia. But for Putin, the incursion crosses another red line.
One Russian source told Reuters the incursion could embolden hardliners in Moscow who advocate a bigger war, but Putin's choice may not be easy.
He has sought to portray Europe's biggest war in seven decades both as a limited "special military operation" that need not upset daily Russian life and as a historic fight with a West that scorns Moscow's interests and seeks to dismember Russia.
The US, which has said it cannot allow Putin to win the Ukraine war, so far deems the surprise incursion a protective move that justifies the use of US weaponry, officials in Washington said.
But they also expressed worries about complications as Ukrainian troops push further into enemy territory.
