Ukrainian forces launched an offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainian and Russian officials said on Sunday, in what appeared to be an attempt to regain the initiative there as they struggle to thwart continuing Russian attacks across eastern Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian forces launched a major attack involving tanks, mine-clearing equipment and at least a dozen armored vehicles, and claimed to have thwarted the attack. After Ukrainian forces unexpectedly attacked the city of Kursk last summer, they seized control of the region 500 square miles Of territory that Russia was slowly regaining.
Andriy Kovalenko, a senior Ukrainian government official who focuses on Russian disinformation operations, issued a statement referring to the Kursk region, saying, “The Russians are very concerned because they were attacked on several fronts and this was a surprise to them.”
Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the region who were contacted by phone refused to discuss ongoing operations, saying only that Ukraine was on the offensive in parts of the Kursk region and that heavy fighting was taking place there.
Neither side’s claims could be independently verified, and the scope of the Ukrainian attacks remained unclear.
Military analysts said the attacks may have been a deliberate attempt to mislead, forcing Russian forces to respond on part of the front in the hope of weakening them elsewhere.
Russian forces continue to make costly but steady gains in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers and officials said they were steadily crushing a pocket of resistance around the town of Kurakhov in the southern Donbas region and were also fighting to encircle the larger city of Pokrovsk to the north.
They are now within a mile of the vital supply route to Pokrovsk, which has served as a vital logistics and transportation hub for Ukrainian forces in the region.
Some American officials initially expressed doubts about the wisdom behind the Ukrainian incursion last August, fearing that it would be a drain on already exhausted and undermanned brigades struggling to stabilize defensive lines.
But as Russian losses increased and Ukraine strengthened its positions in the region, some of these same American officials took refuge Changed their ratings.
The Ukrainian military leadership has claimed that forcing the Kremlin to spend valuable resources on Kursk prevented the Kremlin from sending tens of thousands of troops to support Russian attacks along other parts of the front.
Ukraine now controls less than half of the territory it captured in the Kursk offensive last summer, but has been defending what remains despite repeated waves of Russian counterattacks, including recent attacks reinforced by thousands of North Korean soldiers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to downplay the significance of the Kursk invasion, which was Russia’s first ground invasion since the end of World War II.
Although he said that expelling Ukrainian forces was a “sacred duty” of the military, he recently refused to provide a timetable for when this might be accomplished.
“We will definitely expel them,” Putin said at his annual press conference in December. “I cannot answer the question regarding a specific date at this time.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Moscow continues to pay a heavy price in its attempt to expel the Ukrainians.
“Specifically, in the battles that took place today and yesterday near only one village – Makhnovka in the Kursk region – the Russian army lost to an infantry battalion, including North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers,” Zelensky said on Saturday evening. The battalion consists of between 600 and 800 soldiers.
It was not possible to verify his claim but the Pentagon recently said North Korea did as well Suffering huge losses On the Kursk front, where more than 1,000 people were killed or wounded in just a few weeks.
The official Russian RIA Novosti news agency said that about 340 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded in Kursk during the past 24 hours. The agency, citing the Russian Ministry of Defense, did not mention human losses among Russians.
Zelensky said holding the territory in Kursk gives Kiev a “very strong trump card” in any potential negotiations with Moscow.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to quickly end the war once he takes office, without explaining how.
Lyubov Shlodko, Natalia Novosolova and Valerie Hopkins Contributed to reports.
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