Monday, January 6, 2025 - Ukraine has launched a counterattack in the southern Russian border region of Kursk after months of offensive actions by Moscow, warning that Russia is “getting what it deserves.”
The Kursk offensive – the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II – took Russia and Ukraine’s allies by surprise when it was launched. Kyiv’s troops advanced quickly, though Russia eventually began to push their forces back; the line of control has not changed dramatically in recent months.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering
Disinformation, an official body, said Ukrainian forces had launched surprise
attacks against Russian forces in several locations across Kursk, months after
launching its incursion in the region.
In a short Telegram post on Sunday night, January 2025, the head of the
Ukrainian Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, said: “Kursk region, good news,
Russia is getting what it deserves.”
The Ukrainian military first launched an
incursion into Kursk in August and has held much of the territory it took,
despite efforts by Russian and recently deployed North Korean troops to drive
Ukrainian units back across the border.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that the Ukrainians had
launched counterattacks to stop a Russian offensive, as reported by the
official TASS news agency. It said that both had been repelled, adding that a
Ukrainian assault including two tanks and 12 armoured vehicles had been
defeated near the village of Berdin, some 15 kilometres (9 miles) from the
border. The ministry said air power had been used against Ukrainian forces in
several areas
Also, a blog associated with Russia’s
Northern Group of Forces said that its units were moving forward, adding that
there were “active hostilities in Sudzha district, the enemy is acting in
mobile groups on armoured vehicles, our aviation and artillery are working,
small arms battles are going on.”
On Saturday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr
Zelensky said that in battles near the village of Makhnovka, the Russian army
lost up to a battalion of North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers. A
battalion is normally several hundred troops.
Russian military blogs, which often provide
reliable reporting on the Ukraine conflict, acknowledged the fighting on
Sunday. One said that the Ukrainians were pushing north towards Berdin.
“The enemy has thrown reserves into the
offensive in Kursk region,” said one blog Sunday.
“For the breakthrough, the AFU
covered the area with powerful radio electronic warfare systems, hampering the
work of our UAVs (drones),” the blog said. “There are small arms battles, our
artillery and tanks are actively working against the enemy.”
A second blog said the Ukrainians had also
landed paratroopers and intensified fighting in other directions.
“In this offensive the enemy uses mine
clearance trawls, tanks and other armored vehicles,” the blog said, adding that
frosty ground was enabling the attack, but that was not expected to last. It
added that Russian bombers were in action.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that
some 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where
Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging the cross-border
incursion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to
say when Russia would recapture the southern Kursk region after a phone-in
question at his year-end news conference last month.
“Our guys are fighting, there is a battle
going on right now, and serious battles. It is unclear why, there was no
military sense in the Ukrainian Armed Forces entering the Kursk region, or
holding on there now as they are doing, throwing their best units there to be
slaughtered,” Putin said.
One possible motive behind Kyiv’s
decision to enter Russia was to improve its negotiating position ahead of any
potential future ceasefire negotiations.
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