On Sunday, January 5th, Ukraine launched a large-scale counterattack in the Kursk region of Russia. Since invading the area and occupying a large swath of territory in August last year, the Ukrainian army has faced pressure in defending this position.
Officials from Ukraine and Russia have both confirmed the occurrence of this attack, but they have differing accounts of the specific circumstances.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, stated that the Ukrainian army launched assaults against Russian forces from several locations in Kursk.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, shared a brief post on the social media platform Telegram, saying, “Kursk region, good news, Russia is getting what it deserves.”
Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defense posted on Telegram that on Sunday morning Moscow time, Ukraine deployed two tanks, a mine-clearing vehicle, twelve armored vehicles, and landing troops to launch an attack against Russian forces.
The statement claimed that the Russian army had repelled two attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces.
In a surprising move last August, Ukraine launched a cross-border attack in the Kursk region of southern Russia, marking the first foreign invasion on Russian soil since World War II. However, since then, Russia has been ramping up its forces in an attempt to drive out the Ukrainian army from Kursk. They have also deployed approximately 10,000 North Korean soldiers to the region, putting immense pressure on the Ukrainian forces in the battle to hold the area.
Both Ukraine and Russia have been striving to gain the upper hand on the battlefield before the inauguration of President Trump on January 20th in the United States, in order to have more leverage in future peace negotiations.