 Russia wants to create 15-kilometer buffer zone in Kharkiv to stop the Belgorod attacks. Russia has reiterated its calls for a large-scale offensive in Kharkiv-Oblast to create a buffer zone with Russia's Belgorod-Oblast. The Institute for the Study of War ISW said, military analysts noted that this is being done despite the Russian military's likely inability to conduct an operation to seize significant territory in Kharkiv-Oblast in the near future. Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for the Russian president, said that Russian troops would do everything possible to prevent attacks on Belgorod-Oblast by Ukraine. Russian sources using Peskov's comment called on Russian troops to create a buffer zone up to 15 kilometers deep in Kharkiv-Oblast to push Ukrainian MLRS and artillery away from the border with Belgorod-Oblast. Russian ultra-nationalists have regularly called for a similar operation in the summer of 2023 amid widespread discontent with cross-border raids by pro-Ukrainian forces in Belgorod-Oblast. The ISW believes that a Russian invasion 15 kilometers deep and several 100 kilometers wide would be a large-scale operation that would require a grouping of forces much larger and much better equipped than the troops currently concentrated along the entire border with Ukraine, least of all in Belgorod-Oblast. ISW has already assessed that Russian forces may intensify their efforts to capture Kupyansk in Kharkiv-Oblast in the coming weeks and that the Russian grouping on the Kupyansk front appears better equipped to conduct an intensive offensive than elsewhere in Ukraine or along the border.