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Russia said that on Sunday Ukraine had launched a new attack in the Kursk region, an area of western Russia where Russian forces have been trying to push out Ukrainian forces for the past five months.
Ukrainian troops breached the border in a surprise incursion on August 6 and have managed to hold on to a swath of territory that could provide Kiev with an important bargaining chip in potential peace talks.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces were repulsing Ukrainian forces, but some reports from Russian military bloggers suggested the Russian side had come under heavy pressure.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, posted on Telegram that there was “good news” from Kursk, adding: “Russia is getting what it deserves.”
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the official Center Against Disinformation of Ukraine, wrote on Telegram that Russian troops were attacked in several places.
The Russian statement said Ukraine attacked near the village of Berdin at 0600 GMT with two tanks, a mine-clearing vehicle and 12 armored fighting vehicles with paratroopers.
“Artillery and aviation of the North group of (Russian) troops defeated the attack group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” it added.
The statement said two Ukrainian attacks had been repelled. Reuters could not independently verify the situation on the ground.
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Reports from Russia’s widely read war bloggers, who support Moscow’s war in Ukraine but have often reported critically on failures and setbacks, indicate that the Ukrainian attack had at least temporarily put Russian forces on the defensive.
“Despite strong pressure from the enemy, our units heroically held the line,” the Operativnye Svodki (Operational Reports) channel said in the first hours after the attack.
In a later update, another influential blogger, Yuri Podolyak, said Russian units had gained control of the situation after initial “mistakes” and surrounded Ukrainian forces north of a highway leading to the regional capital Kursk.
Acting Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein told people to trust only official sources, and warned displaced residents not to return to unsafe areas without permission.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say about 11,000 troops from Russia’s ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow’s forces. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied its presence.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday: “In battles yesterday and today near only one village, Makhnovka, in Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroopers.”
He did not give specific details. A battalion can vary in size, but generally consists of several hundred troops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in response to a question at his annual marathon phone call last month that Russia would definitely expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk, but declined to set a date for when this would happen.
Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine, but Ukraine’s unexpected success in carving out and retaining a chunk of Russian territory could boost its negotiating position as both sides gear up for possible peace talks this year.
Both have sought to improve their battleground positions before US President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on January 20. Trump has repeatedly said that he will bring a quick end to the war, but without saying how.
However, by deploying some of its most effective units to the Kursk offensive, Ukraine has weakened the defenses of its own eastern regions where Russian forces have advanced at their fastest pace since 2022 since August.
