Ukrainian forces have launched a major new offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, a region that Ukraine captured parts of last summer but has struggled to hold on to in recent months under pressure from Russian and North Korean forces.
Ukrainian and Russian officials confirmed the offensive, but the sides gave differing explanations about the scale and efficiency of the new operation.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Combating Disinformation, said on Telegram that Ukrainian forces were attacking the Russians in several directions, and that Moscow was “in great distress” due to the surprise offensive.
“Russia gets what it deserves,” Andriy Yermak, one of the top presidential advisers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a brief Telegram post.
The Ukrainian General Staff of the Armed Forces has not officially commented on the Kursk offensive, neither Zelensky nor the Ministry of Defense.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a message on Telegram that Ukraine launched an offensive on Sunday morning Moscow time with two tanks, a mine clearance vehicle and 12 armored fighting vehicles with landing troops.
Russian officials claimed to have defeated the initial advance, although operations to repel the attack continued.
Russian military bloggers also confirmed that a major offensive was underway, with popular writer Rybar posting on his Telegram channel that Ukraine was introducing into Kursk several formations that had gathered in the Ukrainian region of Sumy, which borders Kursk.
Rybar claimed that Ukraine concentrated its efforts from the city of Sudzha, which Ukraine captured in August, and further north towards the Bolshesoldatsky district.
The offensive comes as the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk in August, the first foreign invasion of Russian territory since World War II, has fizzled out and comes under heavy pressure from a Russian counterattack backed by thousands of North Korean soldiers .
Ukraine has lost tens of square kilometers of territory to the Russian counterattack and has been in the background in the region for more than a month.
Zelensky said Kursk was a key strategy in the war effort, aiming to divert Russian forces from the main fighting in eastern Ukraine while taking prisoners, destroying Russian military assets and proving that Moscow was undefended .
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