The White House offered Putin a way to stop the Kursk invasion: ‘Get the hell out of Ukraine’

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have been caught off guard by Ukraine’s attack on Kursk.

The White House offered a blunt response to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday amid Ukraine’s attack on his country’s Kursk region.

John Kirby, the US’s national security communications advisor, said on Monday that if Ukraine’s incursion into the western Russian region made Putin uncomfortable, “there’s an easy solution: He can just get the hell out of Ukraine and call it a day.”

It has been more than a week since Ukrainian forces launched a surprise attack on Kursk.

While much is unknown about the full extent of the incursion, a top Ukrainian general said Tuesday that the country’s forces had captured some 390 square miles of Russian territory.

The incursion appears to have caught Russia off guard, with regional officials saying Ukraine seized 28 settlements along the border and had caused more than 120,000 people to flee.

On Monday, Kirby’s remarks came in response to a question about earlier remarks by Putin, in which he accused the West of “waging war against us using Ukrainians” in the shock incursion into Kursk, as Russian state-controlled media reported.

It’s unclear whether the White House had prior knowledge of the attack. Last week, the White House’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, suggested it did not, saying it was planning to reach out to Kyiv to learn more about its objectives.

The US and other Ukrainian allies have been frank in their responses to Russian complaints about the incursion.

Earlier in the week, a State Department spokesperson said it was “a little bit rich” for Russia to complain of an attack on its territory when it was deep into the invasion of Ukraine.

European officials have said Ukraine has the “legitimate right” to launch counterattacks on Russian soil.