STORY: Video released on Monday (August 12) shows the governor of Russia's Belgorod region going door to door in villages, encouraging residents to evacuate in the face of new Ukrainian military operations.
Belgorod is the second region next to Ukraine where Russia urged civilians to leave, and it comes almost a week after Ukraine launched a stunning cross-border incursion that caught Moscow by surprise.
Ukrainian fighters shared videos of themselves in the Kursk region, removing a Russian flag from a building and hoisting their own blue-and-yellow banner.
Another Ukrainian soldier shared this selfie from the Russian town of Sudzha, complaining that a Russian supermarket chain was inferior to a Ukrainian one.
Ukrainian forces rammed through the Russian border last Tuesday (August 6) and swept across some Western parts of Russia's Kursk region, a surprise attack that may be aimed at gaining leverage in possible ceasefire talks after the U.S. election in November.
Over the weekend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy publicly acknowledged the operation for the first time.
On Sunday (August 11), he shared a video saying that Russia's repeated attacks on Ukraine from the Kursk region deserved "a fair response."
The Ukrainian attack has prompted some in Moscow to question why Ukraine was able to pierce the Kursk region so easily after more than two years of the most intense land war in Europe since World War Two.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday alleged that Ukraine was trying to undermine Russian stability with its incursion.
He said "the enemy will certainly receive a worthy response."
