Ukraine has launched new attacks in Russia\u2019s southern Kursk region as US President Donald Trump pushes for ceasefire talks. <\/p>\n
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor, said that Ukrainian forces launched a new series of assaults in the Kursk region on Thursday, advancing up to five kilometres (three miles) behind Russian lines southeast of Sudzha. <\/p>\n
While it is not clear whether the attacks are aimed at seizing more territory or reinforcing Ukraine\u2019s defensive positions, ISW analyst Angelica Evans said advances of such scale were impressive. <\/p>\n
Kyiv surprised even its allies with its attack on Russian territory and keeps fighting in Kursk even as it faces extremely difficult situations elsewhere along the frontline. <\/p>\n
Russia claimed on Friday that it has now taken over Toretsk, an industrial town in eastern Ukraine that has been one of the epicenters of the fight for the past six months. Ukraine has not commented on the claim, but if confirmed, the fall of Toretsk would be another strategic win for Moscow as it would bring Russian troops closer to important Ukrainian defensive positions. <\/p>\n
At the same time, Russian troops have been inching towards Pokrovsk, a logistic hub in eastern Ukraine that has been in Russia\u2019s sight since the summer, and Kupiansk in the north. <\/p>\n
Some in Ukraine, including some troops fighting in Kursk and elsewhere, are questioning Kyiv spending precious resources in Russia when it is struggling to defend its own territory. <\/p>\n
The answer likely comes down to the expectation that Trump might start pressuring Ukraine to agree to talks with Russia soon. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing inherently valuable about the actual land that the Ukrainians are holding in Kursk. It\u2019s fields and settlements, they\u2019re not threatening Kursk city or making a run on Moscow,\u201d Evans said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut when we\u2019re thinking about peace negotiation, holding Russian territory could be a critical asset for the Ukrainians when they\u2019re thinking about bargaining for their own territory back or for other things that they might want from the Russians in future peace negotiation,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s military and political leaders have repeatedly said that the Kursk operation was aimed at preventing a new Russian offensive in northern Ukraine and forcing Moscow to redeploy some of its troops from elsewhere in Ukraine. <\/p>\n
The incursion was Ukraine\u2019s biggest strategic gain since the liberation of Kherson in November 2022 and it gave the country a major morale boost. <\/p>\n
But this week, as Trump continued his calls for negotiations to end the war, Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky made it clear Kyiv sees Kursk as a potential bargaining chip. <\/p>\n
Speaking on Wednesday, he called the incursion \u201ca very important operation.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201dYou will see later, when we reach a diplomatic settlement to end the war, what conditions the Russians will face with regard to the Kursk direction,\u201d he said in his nightly address to the nation. <\/p>\n
Trump has made it clear he wants talks between Russia and Ukraine to start \u201cas quickly as possible.\u201d He said that his administration is in direct contact with both Russia and Ukraine. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe made a lot of progress on Russia, Ukraine,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens. We\u2019re going to stop that ridiculous war,\u201d Trump said on Monday. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s been six months since Kyiv launched its surprise incursion into the Kursk region and while Russia has managed to reclaim more than half of the territory initially ceased by Kyiv, this came at a huge cost to Moscow. <\/p>\n
The Ukrainian General Staff said Thursday that Russia lost 40,000 troops over the six months of fighting in Kursk \u2013 16,100 of whom were killed. <\/p>\n
\u201cUkrainian forces captured 909 Russian military personnel, significantly replenishing the exchange fund. This allowed hundreds of Ukrainian defenders who were in Russian prisons to return home,\u201d the General Staff added. <\/p>\n
The incursion marked the first time foreign troops took control of Russia\u2019s territory since World War II \u2013 a huge embarrassment for the Russian President Vladimir Putin who has largely framed Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine as means to \u201cdefend\u201d the country. <\/p>\n
The Ukrainian military has estimated that Russia deployed some 78,000 troops into Kursk, several times as many as Ukraine has. \u201cThese Russian forces, which include elements of elite units, are tied up and really distracted in Kursk. [Otherwise] they would more than likely be fighting on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine where they could do a lot of damage,\u201d Evans said. <\/p>\n
Yet despite the numerical advantage, the Russian military struggled to push the Ukrainians out of its territory and so Moscow eventually called in foreign reinforcements, deploying some 12,000 North Korean soldiers into the Kursk region. <\/p>\n
By doing so, Putin became the first Russian leader ever to have to rely of foreign troops to liberate Russian soil, according to Evans. <\/p>\n
She said that the strategic impact of the gains made by the Ukrainian troops deployed into Kursk were \u201csignificantly greater than these forces could have achieved defending within Ukraine.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe military activity isn\u2019t going to collapse the Russian state, but the pressures that they\u2019re putting on the Russians are things that could,\u201d she added, saying that discontent is growing within Russia over the fact that Ukraine has been able to hold onto Russian territory for six months. \u201cThat is something that really hurts Putin\u2019s credibility within Russia, and this vision that he\u2019s created for himself as a defender and stabilizer.\u201d <\/p>\n
Speaking to the acting governor of Kursk region Alexander Khinshtein on Wednesday, Putin admitted the situation in Kursk was \u201cvery difficult.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yet the North Korean troops did little to help Russia regain its territory, with Russia using them mostly as foot soldiers who carry out brutal mass ground assaults that lead to huge casualties. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian officials and Western intelligence said around 4,000 of those North Korean troops have been killed or injured. The South Korean intelligence service said earlier this week that the North Korean troops deployed to Kursk have not engaged in combat since mid-January, according to local media, confirming earlier reports by the Ukrainian military. <\/p>\n
Evans said that Russia is struggling to repel Ukrainian forces because of Kyiv\u2019s superior use of technology, mostly drones and electronic warfare interference technology. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Ukraine has launched new attacks in Russia\u2019s southern Kursk region as US President Donald Trump pushes for ceasefire talks. The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor, said that Ukrainian forces launched a new series of assaults in the Kursk region on Thursday, advancing up to five kilometres (three miles) behind Russian <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}