Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday, September 12, that the Russian army has launched a counteroffensive in the Russian border region of Kursk, where kyiv’s forces have seized more than 1,000 km2 since the start of their assault in August.
“The Russians have launched counter-offensive actions,” said Volodymyr Zelensky, while assuring that this response by Moscow’s forces “is in line with the Ukrainian plan,” without providing further details.
Russian army says it has retaken 10 towns from Ukrainians
The Russian Defense Ministry said it had recaptured ten villages from Ukrainian hands in two days in its Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces say they control about a hundred localities. “During offensive operations, units of the ‘North’ group of troops liberated 10 localities in two days,” the Russian ministry said in a statement.
Since August 6, kyiv has been conducting an incursion into this region located opposite that of Sumy in eastern Ukraine, in the hope in particular of creating a buffer zone to protect its border population from air attacks from Moscow. The front in this Russian region has been largely frozen for the past two weeks, with neither side claiming any advances, unlike what is happening on the front in eastern Ukraine where Russian troops, on the offensive, are now only a few kilometers from the city of Pokrovsk, an important logistical hub.
According to the Telegram channel Rybar, which is close to the Russian army, the fighting in the Kursk region is mainly taking place around the town of Snagosti, in the western part of the region controlled by Ukraine. It was in this area that the Ukrainian army had destroyed several bridges in recent weeks, forcing the Russians to build pontoons to span a river, the Seyim. Images have been posted on social media in the last two days by Russian military bloggers, which they claim show an attack by Russian tanks on Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region and a group of Ukrainian soldiers being taken prisoner.