Ukraine said its forces were holding back some 50,000 enemy troops in the Russian border region of Kursk as US secretary of state Antony Blinken flew to Europe to discuss support for Kyiv ahead of Donald Trump’s second stint as US president.
Ukraine’s military said Russia launched 110 drones in the early hours of Tuesday, 46 of which were shot down and 60 of which disappeared from radar screens, suggesting they were disabled by electronic jamming.
Russia also fired several missiles and air-launched bombs at Ukrainian cities, and officials announced that the bodies of a mother and three children had been found in the ruins of an apartment block in the eastern city of Kryvyi Rih, which was badly damaged in a missile strike on Monday that also injured 14 other civilians.
Heavy fighting continued in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces are using their greater numbers and firepower to grind towards the small strategic city of Pokrovsk. They are now approaching the nearby town of Kurakhove, where Ukrainian officials say they badly damaged a dam on a local reservoir, causing some 15 million cubic metres of water to escape; despite earlier fears, no nearby villages have been flooded, however.
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Ukraine’s attack on Kursk in August, when it seized more than 1,000 square kilometres of Russian territory, failed to force Moscow to redeploy troops from eastern Ukraine to defend the area. Political and military officials in Kyiv argue, however, that the operation has prevented Moscow from reinforcing its contingent in Ukraine.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that in Kursk “our men are holding back a fairly large grouping of Russian troops – 50,000 of the occupier’s army personnel, who ... cannot be deployed to other Russian offensive directions on our territory. We greatly appreciate the bravery of all our warriors, every unit involved in these battles”.”
Kyiv says thousands of North Korean soldiers are also in Kursk alongside Russian forces, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un signed a decree on Monday to ratify a mutual defence treaty with Moscow. Russia’s autocratic president Vladimir Putin signed the “comprehensive strategic partnership” last Saturday.
In another sign of deepening authoritarianism in Russia, a Moscow court on Tuesday jailed paediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova (68) for 5½ years for spreading “fake” information about the Russian army. She was arrested after the ex-wife of a soldier killed in Ukraine reported her for criticising the invasion during a consultation.
Mr Blinken is expected in Brussels on Wednesday for “meetings with his Nato and European Union counterparts to discuss support for Ukraine in its defence against Russia’s aggression”, the US state department announced, amid concern in Kyiv and Europe over how Mr Trump will approach a war that he has claimed he could end “in one day”.
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