Al Jazeera Podcasts.

Today, Russia is promising a tough response after being caught flat-footed by Ukraine.

In the gravest of challenges for Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian troops appear to raise their

flag over Russian territory. How did this happen and what does it tell us about the state of the war?

I'm Kevin Horton and this is The Take.

Ukraine is playing a new role in its war with Russia.

It sent troops into Russia's Kursk region just across the border in southwestern Russia.

Moscow said it sent reserves to repel hundreds of Ukrainian fighters and tanks that crossed

into its territory.

Ukraine's largest ground incursion into Russian territory since the war in Ukraine began.

And now, Russia has been forced to evacuate more than 76,000 residents from the region.

It's also scrambling to get troops in to match this Ukrainian offensive.

My name's Alex Katopoulos. I'm a defense editor for Al Jazeera English TV, and I live and work here in Doha, in Qatar.

So, Alex, we throw around the term sneak attack a lot, but this Ukrainian incursion into Russia

seems to have surprised absolutely everyone, including Vladimir Putin.

So this first started on Tuesday, which is a week ago, and the Russians are seemingly still flummoxed by it.

Can you walk us through what happened, where this is happening, and what you think the strategy was to start?

Well, this started out as a cross-border raid in force.

This had happened before in Belgarod over a year ago

where they had units inside basically sabotaging and creating havoc.

This was a similar raid comprised of a few hundred people,

so roughly about half a battalion.

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