A soldier holds up a Russian flag in Kurakhove, Donetsk Region, Ukraine in this screen grab taken from a social media video released on January 5, 2025, obtained by Reuters. Social Media/via REUTERS
(Reuters) -Russia said on Monday its forces had made important gains in eastern Ukraine while continuing to fend off a new Ukrainian offensive inside the Kursk region of western Russia, where a second day of fierce fighting was under way.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces had captured the town of Kurakhove, 32 km (20 miles) south of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian logistics hub toward which Russian forces have been advancing for months.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow had suffered big losses in five months of fighting in Russia's Kursk region with nearly 15,000 killed. He made no mention of Kurakhove.
The Russian ministry said taking Kurakhove, which had held out for many weeks, would enable its forces to boost the pace of their advance in Ukraine's Donetsk region. It also said it had captured Dachenske, a village five miles (8 km) Pokrovsk.
Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine's Khortytsia group of forces, told Reuters that, as of Monday morning, Kyiv's forces were still engaging Russian troops inside Kurakhove.
The General Staff of Ukraine's military, in a late evening report, said Russian forces had launched 25 attacks on Ukrainian positions around Kurakhove, but said nothing about the town changing hands.
Ukrainian bloggers said servicemen were subjected to constant fire from multiple rocket launchers and guided, or glide, bombs. One report said that Kurakhove had been "practically lost".
Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, which tracks the front line using open sources, showed most of Kurakhove under Russian control.
Both sides are fighting to improve their battlefield positions before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to bring a quick end to the nearly three-year-old war, takes office on Jan. 20.
Ukraine's main achievement in the past five months of fighting has been its capture and holding of territory inside Russia's Kursk region that could prove a bargaining chip in possible peace talks.
Ukraine has not revealed details of the new offensive it launched in Kursk on Sunday, though a senior Ukrainian official said Russia was "getting what it deserves".
In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces had established a buffer zone and inflicted heavy losses in Kursk, preventing Moscow from deploying its troops in key areas of the eastern front.
"During the Kursk operation, the enemy has already lost 38,000 of their soldiers in this direction alone, with nearly 15,000 of these losses being irreversible," he said.
Russia's defence ministry said the Ukrainian advance had been foiled and the main force had been destroyed near the settlement of Berdin, close to a road running northeast toward the city of Kursk.
A senior Russian commander said a further attack was expected.
"We are registering a concentration of enemy equipment in another direction and naturally we understand that (Ukraine) will try to strike in this direction. Right now I won't say where," said Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of a Chechen unit fighting for Russia in Kursk.
Independent military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady said Ukraine was trying to hold its pocket of Kursk for as long as possible, even as Russia continued to push deeper into eastern Ukraine.
"There's a likelihood that we haven't seen the main thrust of this Ukrainian offensive operation just yet," he told Reuters. "We are essentially talking about platoon-sized, company-sized assaults with fairly limited gains thus far."
It remained to be seen if Kyiv's forces could open up another axis of advance, Gady added.
Ukrainian and Western assessments suggest about 11,000 troops from Russia's ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow's forces. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday more than 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded. Reuters does not have access to the Kursk war zone and cannot verify casualty figures.
Reacting to the Ukrainian offensive, the United States, Britain and the European Union reaffirmed support for Kyiv.
"Ukraine has the right to defend itself, and under international law, this right extends beyond its borders," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a statement to Reuters.
"Moscow's unlawful war against Ukraine has included numerous Russian attacks originating from the Kursk region."
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said on Sunday: "We are committed to putting Ukraine in the strongest possible position on the battlefield, including by surging security assistance and utilizing all available resources authorized by the Congress.
(Additional reporting by Anastasiia Malenko and Yuliia Dysa in Kyiv and Lili Bayer in Brussels, Kanishka Singh and Mrinmay Dey; Writing by Mark Trevelyan, Editing by Timothy Heritage, Ron Popeski, Bill Berkrot and Sandra Maler)
