Ukraine war briefing: Zelensky reports ‘significant’ losses of Russian and North Korean troops in Kursk | Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Russian and North Korean forces suffered heavy losses during the fighting in South Russia. “In the fighting yesterday and today near a single village, Makhnovka, in the Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantrymen and paratroopers Russians,” Zelenskyy said. “It’s important.” He did not provide any specific details. A battalion can vary in size but is generally made up of several hundred soldiers. Ukrainian and Western assessments indicate that 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a massive cross-border incursion in August.

Zelensky also said “fierce fighting” was raging across the entire 1,000 km (620 mile) front line, with the most difficult situation near the city of Pokrovsk.. A Ukrainian military spokesman said earlier that Pokrovsk remained the “hottest” frontline sector, with Russian troops launching new attacks near the town in a bid to bypass it from the south and cut off routes to the city. supply of Ukrainian troops. Ukraine estimates that about 11,000 of the 60,000 residents still live in the town that once housed a mine that is the sole supplier of coking coal to Ukraine’s once-giant steel industry.

Russia vowed on Saturday to retaliate after accusing Ukraine of firing US-supplied Atacms missiles at the Belgorod border region the day before., saying that all the missiles had been shot down. Atacms missiles have a maximum range of 300 kilometers (190 miles), according to publicly available data. US President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview published last month that he was “very vehemently” opposed to Ukraine’s use of weapons, and also called for an immediate ceasefire as the Ukraine is preparing for Trump to start negotiations.

Russian media Izvestia announced on Saturday that a Ukrainian drone strike had killed its reporter, independent correspondent Alexander Martemyanov, near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. The newspaper said the car was traveling on a highway connecting Donetsk, the main city of the Russian-controlled Donetsk region, and the town of Horlivka to the north. Russia’s state news agency Ria said two of its correspondents traveling with Martemyanov were injured in the incident, as well as two journalists working for a local publication in Donetsk.

A Russian strike on a village in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine killed a 74-year-old man on Saturday., Regional Governor Oleg Synegubov said. Moscow also struck a town in the Sumy region in northern Ukraine, wounding seven people, including a two-year-old girl, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And in the southern part of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region, a 10-year-old boy was killed and his parents injured when a drone hit their car, said the region’s Moscow-based head, Yevgeny Balitsky. .

The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday that it had captured the Ukrainian village of Nadiya., one of the few settlements in the eastern Luhansk region still under kyiv control. Moscow advanced nearly 4,000 square kilometers into Ukraine in 2024, according to an AFP analysis, as kyiv’s army grappled with chronic manpower shortages and exhaustion.

Russia on Saturday declared a regional state of emergency in Crimea, which it conquered in 2014 from Ukraine., as workers cleared tons of contaminated sand and soil from either side of the Kerch Strait after an oil spill in the Black Sea last month. Mikhail Razvojaev, the Russian-installed governor of the city of Sevastopol, said new traces of minor pollution must be urgently removed and declared a state of emergency in the city, giving authorities more power to take quick decisions, such as ordering citizens to evacuate their homes. Rescuers have now cleared more than 86,000 tonnes of contaminated sand and soil, the Emergency Situations Ministry announced on Saturday. Oil leaked from two aging tankers that were hit by a storm on December 15. One sank and the other ran aground.

Russia has arrested four teenagers suspected of planning a “terrorist” attack on the city of Yekaterinburg., Russian state news agencies reported on Saturday. Russia has seen its internal security – already fragile – deteriorate in recent years, as the Kremlin devotes its resources to arresting people suspected of collaborating with Ukraine.

Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria ordered a second day of power cuts on Saturday, as a halt to Russian gas supplies starved the self-proclaimed pro-Moscow energy state. The small breakaway republic bordering Ukraine has been unable to provide heat and hot water to its residents since Wednesday, when Moscow cut gas supplies to Moldova over a financial dispute.