{"id":208347,"date":"2025-01-05T17:27:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T17:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/05\/ukraine-attacks-kursk-region-of-russia-anew\/"},"modified":"2025-01-05T17:27:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T17:27:20","slug":"ukraine-attacks-kursk-region-of-russia-anew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/05\/ukraine-attacks-kursk-region-of-russia-anew\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine Attacks Kursk Region of Russia Anew"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/05\/multimedia\/05ukraine-kursk-zfhl\/05ukraine-kursk-zfhl-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Ukraine Attacks Kursk Region of Russia Anew\" title=\"Ukraine Attacks Kursk Region of Russia Anew\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ukrainian forces went on the offensive in the Kursk region of Russia, Ukrainian and Russian officials said Sunday, in what appeared to be an effort to regain the initiative there as they struggle to thwart relentless Russian assaults across eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Russian Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces launched a large assault featuring tanks, mine-clearing equipment and at least a dozen armored vehicles, and it claimed to have thwarted the attack. After Ukrainian forces unexpectedly attacked Kursk last summer, they took about <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/09\/11\/world\/europe\/russia-pokrovsk-advance.html?searchResultPosition=1\" title=\"\">500 square miles<\/a> of territory that Russia has been slowly clawing back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Andrii Kovalenko, a senior Ukrainian government official focused on Russian disinformation operations, issued a statement referring to the Kursk region, saying that \u201cthe Russians are very worried because they were attacked on several fronts and it was a surprise for them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the area who were reached by phone declined to discuss ongoing operations beyond saying that Ukraine was on the offensive in parts of the Kursk region and that fierce fighting was raging there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was not possible to verify the claims by either side independently, and the scope of the Ukrainian assaults remained unclear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Military analysts said that the attacks could be a deliberate attempt at misdirection, forcing Russian forces to react to one part of the front in the hopes of weakening them elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Russian forces continue to make costly but consistent gains in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. They are steadily grinding down a pocket of resistance around the town of Kurakhove in the southern Donbas region and are also fighting to envelop the larger city of Pokrovsk to the north, Ukrainian soldiers and officials said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They are now within one mile of a critical supply road leading to Pokrovsk, which had served as a vital logistics and transportation hub for Ukrainian forces in the region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some American officials initially expressed skepticism about the wisdom of Ukraine\u2019s incursion last August, concerned that it might be a drain on already exhausted and undermanned brigades struggling to stabilize defensive lines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But as Russian casualties mounted and Ukraine firmed up its positions in the area, some of those same American officials <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/12\/27\/us\/politics\/north-korea-russia-war-casualties.html\" title=\"\">changed their assessments<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ukraine\u2019s military leadership has argued that forcing the Kremlin to expend valuable resources to Kursk prevented the Kremlin from sending tens of thousands of troops to bolster Russian assaults along other parts of the front.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ukraine now holds less than half the territory it seized in the Kursk offensive last summer, but it has been defending what remains despite repeated waves of Russian counterattacks, including recent assaults bolstered by thousands of North Korean soldiers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has sought to downplay the significance of the Kursk incursion, which was the first ground invasion of Russia since the end of World War II.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While saying that it was the military\u2019s \u201csacred duty\u201d to expel Ukrainian forces, he recently declined to offer a timeline for when that might be accomplished.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe will definitely drive them out,\u201d Mr. Putin said at his annual news conference in December. \u201cI cannot answer the question about a specific date right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Moscow continues to pay a high price trying to push the Ukrainians out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cSpecifically, in battles today and yesterday near just one village \u2014 Makhnovka in the Kursk region \u2014 the Russian army lost up to a battalion of infantry, including North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers,\u201d Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday night. A battalion is composed of between 600 and 800 soldiers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was not possible to verify his claim but the Pentagon recently said that North Korea is <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/12\/27\/us\/politics\/north-korea-russia-war-casualties.html?searchResultPosition=14\" title=\"\">suffering mass casualties<\/a> on the Kursk front, with more than 1,000 killed or wounded in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, said that about 340 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and wounded in Kursk the past 24 hours. The agency, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, did not mention Russian casualties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Zelensky said that holding on to land in Kursk gives Kyiv a \u201cvery strong trump card\u201d in any possible negotiations with Moscow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to end the war rapidly once he takes office, without saying how.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Liubov Sholudko<!-- -->, <!-- -->Nataliia Novosolova<!-- --> and <!-- -->Valerie Hopkins<!-- --> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/05\/world\/europe\/ukraine-attack-kursk-russia.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ukrainian forces went on the offensive in the Kursk region of Russia, Ukrainian and Russian officials said Sunday, in what appeared to be an effort to regain the initiative there as they struggle to thwart relentless Russian assaults across eastern Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces launched a large assault featuring tanks, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/05\/multimedia\/05ukraine-kursk-zfhl\/05ukraine-kursk-zfhl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9963,1179,137233,164377,91078,164378,209,8732,202,1130,128440],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208349,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208347\/revisions\/208349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}