Ukraine has captured 594 Russian soldiers during its three-week military operation in Russia’s Kursk region and seized 100 settlements in Russia, the army’s commander-in-chief said on Tuesday.
General Oleksandr Syrskyi said Moscow had redeployed 30,000 troops to the border region and was trying to counterattack and encircle Ukrainian forces, but those attempts were being repelled.
At a news conference in kyiv, Syrskyi acknowledged that one of the goals of the Kursk raid was to divert Russian combat units from eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has been making gains in recent months. They are now about 11 kilometers from Pokrovsk, a key center of the Ukrainian military and transport, and are pressing on the town of Kurakhove.
Some troops have been moved from the occupied south of the country, Syrskyi said. “The enemy is trying to withdraw its units from other directions, but is intensifying its efforts in the Pokrovsk sectors.”
The head of the armed forces said that Russia was trying to disrupt supply lines. “The situation on the Pokrovsk front is quite difficult… the enemy is using its advantage in terms of personnel, weapons and military equipment. “He is actively using artillery and aviation,” he admitted.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky said that decisions were being made to strengthen Ukraine’s forward positions in the Donetsk region and called the raid on Kursk “defensive.” It was done to prevent Russia from seizing more Ukrainian territory and there are no plans to annex Russian territory, he said.
The president’s remarks come as Russia launches new deadly attacks on Ukraine with missiles and drones, a day after carrying out another “massive” attack on Ukraine’s power grid.
On Tuesday morning, an attack on a hotel in the city of Kryvyi Rih killed two people, the latest in a series of attacks on hotels in central and eastern Ukraine, while three more people were killed in drone strikes on the city of Zaporizhia.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 10 ballistic missiles and 81 drones during the assault, and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down five missiles and 60 drones.
Kiev authorities said all missiles targeting the city had been shot down. Explosions were heard as the city’s air defenses repelled the attack.
Meanwhile, Monday’s Russian attack on Ukraine primarily targeted the power grid and killed at least seven people.
The attack caused power outages and water shortages, particularly in kyiv, where shops and businesses had to rely on generators Monday afternoon and evening to keep power flowing. State energy company Ukrenergo said it was implementing emergency power cuts to help stabilize its systems.
The resumption of Russian attacks on the energy grid, after several attacks in the spring that damaged critical infrastructure, will worry Ukraine as winter approaches.
The attack drew widespread condemnation from kyiv’s foreign partners. US President Joe Biden called it “outrageous,” while the German Foreign Ministry said: “Once again, Putin’s Russia is saturating Ukraine’s lifelines with missiles.”
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed Monday that it was attacking energy facilities, saying in a statement that the energy grid was being used to support Ukraine’s “military production complex.”
After Monday’s attacks, Zelensky called on his allies to do more to protect Ukraine, suggesting that European air forces could help kyiv shoot down drones and missiles in the future. “In our different regions of Ukraine, we could do much more to protect lives if the air force of our European neighbors would work together with our F-16s and our air defense,” he said in a videotaped speech.
A Reuters journalist remains in critical condition in hospital after being injured in an attack on Saturday, the news agency reported late on Monday. Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey was part of a six-person Reuters team staying at a hotel in Kramatorsk, near the front line in eastern Ukraine, when he was hit by a missile. Ryan Evans, a British security adviser working for the agency, was killed in the attack.
Translation by Javier Biosca
