Ukraine presses attacks in Russia’s Kursk region

By Volodymyr Yurchuk, KYIV Ukraine

Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will urge allies to boost Ukraine’s air defenses at a meeting this week in Germany, while both sides said Kyiv’s forces pressed new attacks Sunday in Russia’s Kursk region.

Russian shelling, meanwhile, killed at least one person and wounded another in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, local officials said.

Dozens of partner countries will participate in the meeting of the Ramstein group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday, Zelenskyy said, “including those who can help boost our capabilities not only to defend against missiles but also against guided bombs and Russian aviation.”

“We will discuss this with them and continue to persuade them,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Saturday. “The task remains unchanged: strengthening our air defense.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin will attend the meeting, which originally had been scheduled for October with U.S. President Joe Biden present. The session was postponed in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton striking the state of Florida.

The Biden administration is pressing to send as much military aid as possible to Ukraine before Trump is sworn in Jan. 20.

Trump claimed during his election campaign that he could end the nearly 3-year-old war in one day, and his comments have raised questions over whether Washington will continue to be Ukraine’s biggest — and most important — military backer.

Zelenskyy said last week that Trump is “strong and unpredictable,” and those qualities can be a decisive factor in his policy approach to the war.

Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine and last year advanced slowly in eastern areas despite high losses of troops and equipment. The war’s trajectory isn’t going in Ukraine’s favor, with the country shorthanded on the front line and in need of more support from its Western partners.

In Ukraine’s incursion in the Kursk region, Zelenskyy said Russian and North Korean troops had suffered heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s Kursk region.

“In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in the Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroopers,” he said. “This is significant.”

Zelenskyy said last month that 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in Kursk, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August, dealing a blow to Russia’s prestige and forcing it to deploy some of its troops from eastern Ukraine.

The incursion didn’t significantly change the dynamic of the war, and military analysts say Ukraine has lost around 40% of the land it initially captured.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that Ukraine launched a fresh offensive in the Kursk region. It claimed its forces pushed back Ukrainian troops, but some reports from Russian military bloggers indicated that Moscow’s forces faced significant pressure.

A ministry statement said Ukrainian forces attacked about 9 a.m. local time (0600 GMT, 1 a.m. EST) near the village of Berdin with two tanks, a mine-clearing vehicle and 12 armored combat vehicles with paratroopers. Two Ukrainian attacks were repelled, it said.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak said there was “good news” from Kursk and that Russia was “getting what it deserves,” while Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s official Centre Against Disinformation, said on Telegram that Russian troops were attacked in several places.