Ukraine’s 37th Marine Brigade has been fighting Russian Assaults On Kurakhove (Image: Getty)
Ferocious battles were raging in western Russia today as President Volodymr Zelensky revealed 38,000 Kremlin troops have been lost since the Kursk operation began five months ago.Despite these heavy losses, Moscow also reported gains against Kyiv’s forces in mainland , taking a key town.
said its forces had made important ground in eastern while also continuing to fend off the fresh Ukrainian offensive inside the Kursk region of western , where fierce fighting continued.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces had captured the town of Kurakhove, 32 km (20 miles) south of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian logistics hub towards which Russian forces have been advancing for months.
The ministry said taking Kurakhove, which had held out for many weeks, would enable Moscow’s forces to step up the pace of their advance in ‘s Donetsk region.It also said it had captured Dachenske, a settlement within five miles of Pokrovsk.Viktor Trehubov, spokesman for ‘s Khortytsia group of forces, said Kyiv’s forces were continuing to engage with Russian troops inside Kurakhove.
But Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, which tracks the front line using open sources, showed most of Kurakhove under Russian control.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has lost 38,000 men during Ukraine’s Kursk incursion (Image: Getty)
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Both sides are now desperately fighting to improve their battlefield positions before , who has pledged to bring a quick end to the nearly three-year-old war, takes office as US president on January 20.
‘s main achievement in the past five months of fighting has been to capture and hold territory inside ‘s Kursk region that could prove a bargaining chip in possible peace talks.But Mr Zelensky said Russian losses have been heavy.
He said: “Today marks exactly five months since the start of our actions in the Kursk region, and we continue to maintain a buffer zone on Russian territory, actively destroying their military potential there.“During the Kursk operation, the enemy has already lost over 38,000 soldiers in this single direction alone, with approximately 15,000 of them irrecoverable losses.”
has not revealed details of its new offensive it launched in Kursk, though a senior Ukrainian official said was “getting what it deserves”.
‘s defence ministry said the Ukrainian advance had been foiled and the main force had been destroyed near the settlement of Berdin, close to a road running northeast towards the city of Kursk.
A senior Russian commander said a further attack was expected.
“We are registering a concentration of enemy equipment in another direction and naturally we understand that [] will try to strike in this direction. Right now I won’t say where,” said Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of a Chechen unit fighting for in Kursk.
Independent military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady said was trying to hold its pocket of Kursk for as long as possible, even as continued to push deeper into eastern .
“There’s a likelihood that we haven’t seen the main thrust of this Ukrainian offensive operation just yet,” he said.”We are essentially talking about platoon-sized, company-sized assaults with fairly limited gains thus far.”
It remains to be seen if Kyiv’s forces could open up another axis of advance, Gady added.
Ukrainian and Western assessments suggest about 11,000 troops from ‘s ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow’s forces. has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that more than 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded. Reuters does not have access to the Kursk war zone and cannot verify casualty figures.