Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russian and North Korean forces have suffered heavy losses in fighting in Russia's southern Kursk region.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that some 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swaths of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy quoted a report from the top Ukrainian commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border.
"In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops," Zelenskyy said. "This is significant."
The president provided no specific details. A battalion can vary in size but is generally made up of several hundred troops.
In the Sumy region, which borders Russia’s Kursk, a Russian guided bomb attack Saturday wounded 10 people, including two children, in a village near the border, local authorities said. Zelenskyy posted a video of the damage in his nightly address.
Reuters could not independently verify the president's accounts.
'Fierce battles'
Zelenskyy also said "fierce battles" had raged along the entire 1,000-kilometer front line, with the most difficult situation near the city of Pokrovsk.
A Ukrainian military spokesperson earlier said Pokrovsk remained the hottest front-line sector, with Russian troops launching fresh attacks near the town to bypass it from the south and cut off supply routes to Ukraine's troops.
The capture of the road and rail hub in the eastern Donetsk region could create serious difficulties for the Ukrainian army on the eastern front and allow Russia to reinforce and advance its front line to the west.
"The Pokrovsk direction remains the hottest [battle zone] and there the Russians attacked 34 times (in the past 24 hours) and tried to break through our defenses south of Pokrovsk," Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine's Khortytsia group of forces, told Ukrainian national television.
Trehubov said Russian forces were trying to block supply routes by sending small groups of soldiers to settlements south of Pokrovsk.
"They (Russians) don't go directly into the city because it means heavy urban fighting. So, they first try to bypass the city and interrupt the logistics chains," Trehubov said.
He said Kyiv's forces were using drones and precision weapons to try and prevent Russian troops from reaching their targets.
The city, home to a mine that is the sole supplier of coking coal to Ukraine's once-giant steel industry, had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. Ukraine estimates that around 11,000 of them remain in the city.
Also Saturday in the Donetsk region, the Russian media outlet Izvestia said a Ukrainian drone strike killed its reporter near the city of Donetsk.
"The Ukrainian army launched a drone strike on a civilian car carrying Izvestia's freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov," the daily reported on its Telegram channel. "The car was located far from the line of contact."
Russia downs 8 missiles, says its defense ministry
Russia's defense ministry said Saturday that its forces had taken control of the village of Nadiya in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region and had shot down eight U.S.-made ATACMS missiles.
Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports.
The ministry said its air defense systems had shot down 10 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory Saturday morning, including three over the northern Leningrad region. St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport temporarily halted flight arrivals and departures Saturday morning.
In Ukraine, the air force said Saturday that Ukrainian air defenses downed 34 out of 81 drones launched by Russia overnight.
It said that 47 drones were "lost," in reference to Ukraine's use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones.
