Ukrainian forces have launched an offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainian and Russian officials said Sunday, in what appears to be an attempt to regain the initiative in eastern Ukraine as it struggles to contain Russia’s relentless offensive.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale offensive with tanks, mine-clearing equipment and at least a dozen armored vehicles and repulsed the attack. They took action after Ukrainian forces unexpectedly attacked Kursk last summer 500 square miles The territory that Russia is slowly withdrawing.
“The Russians are very worried because they were attacked on several fronts and it was a surprise for them,” said Andrii Kovalenko, a senior Ukrainian government official who focuses on Russian disinformation operations, referring to the Kursk region.
Contacted by phone, Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the region declined to discuss ongoing operations, except to say that parts of Ukraine’s Kursk region had been attacked and heavy fighting was taking place there.
The claims of both sides could not be independently verified, and the extent of the Ukrainian attacks remained unclear.
Military analysts said the attacks could be a deliberate attempt to misdirect, forcing Russian forces to react on one part of the front in hopes of weakening them elsewhere.
Russian forces continue to score costly but consistent victories in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Ukrainian soldiers and officials said they were steadily crushing pockets of resistance around the southern Donbas city of Kurakhove and were also fighting to encircle the larger city of Pokrovsk in the north.
They are now within a mile of a critical supply route to Pokrovsk, which has served as an important logistics and transportation hub for Ukrainian forces in the region.
Some American officials initially questioned the wisdom of Ukraine’s intervention last August, worried that it could be a drain on already depleted and undermanned brigades struggling to stabilize defense lines.
But as Russian casualties mount and Ukraine strengthens its position in the region, some of those American officials changed their assessments.
Ukraine’s military leadership claims that forcing the Kremlin to spend precious resources on Kursk has prevented the Kremlin from sending tens of thousands of troops to bolster Russian offensives elsewhere on the front.
Ukraine now holds less than half of the territory it captured in last summer’s Kursk offensive, but it is defending the rest despite repeated waves of Russian counterattacks, including recent attacks backed by thousands of North Korean troops.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin tried to downplay the Kursk offensive, Russia’s first land invasion since the end of World War II.
He recently declined to offer a timetable for when that would happen, saying it was the military’s “sacred duty” to withdraw Ukrainian forces.
“We will definitely expel them,” Mr. Putin said at his annual press conference in December. “I can’t answer the question about a specific date right now.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Moscow continues to pay a high price for pushing Ukrainians out of the country.
“In particular, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of infantry, including North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers, in the fighting near the village of Makhnovka in the Kursk region today and yesterday,” Mr Zelensky said on Saturday night. A battalion consists of 600-800 soldiers.
His claim could not be confirmed, but the Pentagon recently said North Korea did causes massive losses Over 1,000 people were killed or wounded on the Kursk front in just a few weeks.
RIA Novosti, the state news agency of Russia, said that in the last 24 hours, about 340 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded in Kursk. The agency, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, did not mention Russian casualties.
Mr Zelenskiy said holding on to Kursk gives Kiev a “very strong trump card” in possible negotiations with Moscow.
The newly elected President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, promised to end the war quickly after taking office, without saying how.
Liubov Sholudko, Natalia Novosolova and Valerie Hopkins contributed to the report.
