Ukrainian troops have launched an offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainian and Russian officials said Sunday, in what appears to be an attempt to reverse the plan as they struggle to stop Russia’s relentless offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine seized about 500 square kilometers last summer from the Kursk region during a surprise attack, but Russia took back about half of the area in the months that followed.
On Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces had launched a new offensive involving tanks, mine clearance equipment and at least a dozen vehicles. The Ministry says it dismissed the attack.
Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the area declined to comment further by phone other than to say that Ukraine is busy in parts of the Kursk region and that heavy fighting is taking place there. Ukraine’s top military commander said Sunday night that there had been 42 “combat” talks in the region in the past 24 hours and that 12 were still ongoing.
It was not possible to verify the claims on either side independently, and the scope of the attack on Ukraine was unclear.
Ukrainian and Western military analysts say the attack may be a deliberate attempt to mislead, to try to force the Russian military to strengthen its defenses there in the hope of weakening them further into Ukrainian territory.
Russian forces continue to make costly but steady gains in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. They continued to try to seal off the town of Kurakhove and were fighting to cover the nearby town of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian soldiers and officials said.
Russian troops are now within one mile of the main road leading to Pokrovsk, which has served as an important transit point and logistics center for Ukrainian forces in the region.
Some U.S. officials initially expressed doubts about the wisdom of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last August, worried that it might drag down already exhausted and ineffective brigades struggling to stabilize defense lines in eastern Ukraine.
But as Russian casualties mounted, some of those American officials changed their assessment.
Although Ukraine now holds less than half of the territory it captured during last summer’s Kursk offensive, it has managed in recent weeks to slow Russia’s advances despite several waves of Russian attacks, including attacks bolstered by thousands of North Korean troops.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin sought to downplay the significance of the Kursk offensive, which was Russia’s first land invasion since the end of World War II.
Although he said it was the military’s “sacred duty” to expel Ukrainian troops, he recently declined to give a timeline for when that might be accomplished.
“We will certainly expel them,” said Mr. Putin at his annual press conference in December. “I can’t answer a question about a specific date right now.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Moscow continued to pay a high price trying to expel Ukrainians.
“Specifically, in the battles today and yesterday near one village – Makhnovka in the Kursk region – the Russian army lost an army of infantry, including North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers,” said Mr. Zelensky on Saturday night. The army consisted of 600 to 800 soldiers.
It was not possible to verify his claim, but the Pentagon recently said that North Korea is suffering heavy casualties on the Kursk front, with more than 1,000 killed or wounded in just a few weeks.
RIA Novosti, a Russian news agency, said about 340 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded in Kursk in the past 24 hours. That claim could not be independently verified, and the news agency, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, did not mention Russian casualties.
Mr Zelensky said holding on to Kursk gave Kyiv a “very strong trump card” in any potential negotiations with Moscow.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to immediately end the war once he takes office, without saying how.
Liubov Sholudko, Natalia Novosolova again Valerie Hopkins reporting contributed.
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