(Moscow) Russia claimed Wednesday the capture of two villages near the industrial town of Kurakhové, in southeastern Ukraine, one of the sectors of the front where its troops are advancing against a Ukrainian army on the verge of ‘exhaustion.
Posted at 5:32 a.m.
According to the daily report from the Russian Defense Ministry, Moscow forces seized Antonivka and Maksimivka, two villages located south of Kurakhové, and north of Vougledar, a Ukrainian fortress that fell in early October.
Russian troops have been approaching for several weeks from the east and south of Kourakhové, a city which had around 18,000 inhabitants before the conflict, and which is notably home to a large deposit of lithium, a rare mineral, nearby.
The Russian army is currently at the gates of the eastern suburbs of this city, located near a reservoir.
Further north, the city of Pokrovsk, an important logistical hub for Ukrainian troops, is also threatened with conquest.
The Russian army took some 500 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in October, a record since the first weeks of the conflict in March 2022, according to an AFP analysis of data from the American Institute for the Study of War ( ISW).
Kursk offensive: Ukraine claims to have captured 717 Russian soldiers
Ukraine said on Wednesday it had captured a total of 717 Russian prisoners of war since the start of its offensive in the Russian border region of Kursk, launched in early August.
The number of Russian soldiers taken prisoner is one of the claimed successes of this Ukrainian operation, which, however, did not make it possible to relax Russian pressure on the eastern front, as the Kyiv authorities hoped.
PHOTO DAVID GUTTENFELDER, ARCHIVES THE NEW YORK TIMES
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Syrsky, reported on Facebook that “717 Russian soldiers” have been taken prisoner since the launch of this offensive on August 6.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Syrsky, reported on Facebook that “717 Russian soldiers” have been taken prisoner since the launch of this offensive on August 6.
This operation, the largest offensive on Russian territory since the end of the Second World War, took Moscow’s forces by surprise in a weakly defended region, and was a humiliating setback for the Kremlin.
The Ukrainian authorities had cited several reasons for this incursion: bringing hostilities to Russian territory, preventing a Russian offensive in the Ukrainian region of Sumy, forcing Moscow to strip the other fronts and taking prisoners with a view to exchanging them for captive Ukrainians. .
Several prisoner exchanges have taken place in recent months, involving several hundred people on each side.
If Ukraine had claimed to have rapidly advanced over more than 1,000 square kilometers in the Kursk region, Russian forces have since claimed to have recaptured almost half of this area.
According to Mr. Syrsky, Russia has massed around 45,000 troops to push back Ukrainian forces in this area.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 11,000 North Korean troops had been deployed to the region to support the Russian army.
Most of the fighting is still taking place in Donbass, the industrial east of Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces have been advancing for months.
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