SUDZHA, RUSSIA—We piled out of the Ukrainian armored personnel carrier to a scene of devastation. The sculpture of Lenin in the main square had been defaced, his name crossed out with and “pidor,” an obscene curse word scribbled below it.

The streets were full of broken glass and branches of blown-up trees. On the wall of one house was graffitied “Ukraine Above All.” The streets were almost completely quiet, except for the crack of artillery and drone fire in the distance.

Until August 6, this was Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Now it is Ukrainian-held territory.

After seeing countless towns in Ukraine reduced to rubble, it was a shock to see such destruction hit Russia itself. Not since the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa in World War Two has Russian territory been invaded, let alone since Russia became a nuclear power.

But now I was standing in Russia—a place where Putin’s goons would normally be on alert to seize me and turn me into another of the journalists and other innocent Westerners he holds hostage.

Less than two months ago, I was banned “in perpetuity” from the territory of the Russian Federation after writing a series of articles—including many for the Daily Beast—exposing the depraved secrets and torture perpetrated during President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the remarkable fight back against it.

Courtesy of Thomas Mutch

That ban lasted about as long as Kherson, the Ukrainian city which Putin’s forces first seized, then lost, was part of “Russia forever.”

The Daily Beast gained access to Sudzha, the largest Ukrainian controlled city in Russia, traveling with the Ukrainian military. It could not have been more surreal to drive over the border into Russia.

“Very dangerous” today, Vadim, a Ukrainian army officer accompanying the Daily Beast said as we crossed the checkpoint to leave Ukraine and go into the belly of the beast. Luckily, our ride had thick armor plating and a group of gun-toting Ukrainian soldiers.

The Russian foreign ministry said that my reporting on Ukraine had been part of the collective West’s “Rusophobic campaign,” and officially sanctioned me. Now, here I was in a huge Ukrainian armored vehicle, careening at top speed across a pothole-filled road from Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast into Russia itself.

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Viewsridge/Wikimedia Commons

But honestly, I was amazed how easy it was to get in. The border was unguarded, and there were no signs of any Russian shelling close to us. When we entered Sudzha, we could hear the thump of artillery.

Yet it was far less intense than equivalent sound when I have visited under-fire Ukrainian cities like Bakhmut or Kherson. All along the road armored personnel carriers, tanks and regular cars and vans were carrying Ukrainian soldiers to and from the frontline.

In the Ukrainian border town of Yunakivka, we couldn’t hear any artillery fire or drones, but several buildings on the road were completely destroyed by Russian glide bombs.

We peered out the narrow slits of windows at the border crossing point, every building of which had been turned to rubble. On August 6, Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive into Russian territory, aiming to throw yet another spanner into Putin’s war machine.

After two weeks of intense fighting, the Ukrainians had nearly 25 miles into Russia proper, controlling around 750 square miles of territory, according to Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top general.

Courtesy of Thomas Mutch

The only other western journalist known to have penetrated Kursk, CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh, is now the subject of a criminal investigation by Russia’s FSB security service, the KGB successor announced Thursday. In a statement, the FSB said Paton Walsh, who is British, and two Ukrainian colleagues had “illegally crossed the State Border of the Russian Federation.”

The Daily Beast withdrew our correspondent from Moscow during the early months of the war in Ukraine after Putin introduced tyrannical press laws that could have seen them jailed for reporting the truth.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that Ukraine aims to establish a “buffer zone” in Kursk, possibly a knowing reference to a Russian plan to establish a “buffer zone” in Kharkiv Oblast, before the Russian offensive there stalled.

But the area still remains a dangerous fighting zone. A Ukrainian soldier received a call on a walkie-talkie and turned with a worried expression. “Drones, flying. An FPV, an Orlan.” They can be used by Russians to direct artillery fire, and, according to the soldier “if they see us, they will almost certainly try to hit us with something.”

Underneath a disused school a shelter was being used by some of the civilians yet to evacuate.

The sign next to the door says “peaceful people.” Nikolai, a middle-aged man bringing supplies in and out of the basement, maintained that ordinary Russians had nothing to do with the war and should not be blamed.

When asked what the people living so close to the warzone thought of the situation in Ukraine, he said “We are small poor people, we don’t know what to do, whatever we do will not help. We don’t watch TV or this propaganda… but, these are the masters of the country, they are doing this war, not us. We are not guilty.”

He didn’t vote in elections, he said because “I’m not going, because nothing will change so why should I waste my time.”

“Oh. Not political!” Vadim said with a smirk.

I asked the Ukrainian soldiers if they had sympathy for the civilians sheltering ironically from the shelling of their own army. “Honestly, not really. I am from Mariupol,” said Oleksiy, a Ukrainian soldier in Sudzha “so after seeing what happened in Bucha and in my home city, I maybe feel a little sympathy for them, but they are very low down my list.”

Courtesy of Thomas Mutch

Tetyana Drobotia, a Ukrainian journalist from Zaporizhzhia told me this was typical of the Russian mindset that took no responsibility for their country’s atrocities. “I just listened to that recording you sent and honestly, I’m so angry. They look nice, but when the conversation goes deeper they are so absolutely Russian! Only on the third year of the war when there was shelling they went to the basement. But other than that they did not care about this!”

Already, there were signs that the Ukrainians were digging in and preparing defensive positions. In addition to tanks, there were also excavators being used to dig trenches.

“Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod. These are all historical Ukrainian territories,” said Dmytro, a Ukrainian soldier in Sumy with his tongue half in cheek. The Kremlin has frequently claimed Ukrainian regions like Donetsk, Kharkiv and Odesa are historical Russian territories. Here the Ukrainians were turning the tables. They may yet advance further, as they have been assaulting the town of Koronevo, and potentially thousands of Russian soldiers Re trapped in a pocket between the border and the river Seim.

Ukraine has scored a tactical and political victory in Kursk. They have changed the narrative from that of being continually ground down and losing land in Donbas. They have made a mockery of Putin and the West’s “red lines” and showed his promises of escalation to be hollow and false.

Even the name “Kursk” is freighted with meaning: this was where the Nazis launched their last major offensive on the Eastern Front in 1943. In history’s largest tank battle, the Soviets fought back Hitler—a victory every Russian schoolchild is taught about. This is Russia’s equivalent of the D-Day Beaches. Putin has suffered not just an invasion, but an embarrasment on sacred ground.

Despite Ukraine’s extraordinary success in Kursk, the trajectory is darker further east in their own country. Ukraine’s frontlines in the Donetsk region have cracked, and Russian forces are steadily gaining territory around key cities including Toretsk and Pokrovsk. Ukraine may have attempted to draw Russian reserves from Pokrovsk, but so far the Russian advance has continued unabated. Thousands of civilians are evacuating every day, and soldiers report being outnumbered and outgunned by the Russians by between 5 and 10 to 1 depending on the location.

Still for the Ukrainian soldiers holding the Russian town of Sudzha, the situation remains stable.

And for the first time since the liberation of Kherson in November 2022, Ukraine’s citizens, battered by a brutal and bloody invasion which has turned into a long war of attrition, have a victory to celebrate.