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After five months of war in Kursk, Voldymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, said that practically 15,000 Russian troops had perished. Ukraine’s troops had established a buffer zone in the Kursk area, he added, therefore stopping Russians from “direct[ing]… force to other directions, particularly to the Donetsk region, Sumy, Kharkiv region or Zaporizhzia.”
Russia said that despite defending against a fresh Ukrainian attack inside the Kursk area, its forces had achieved significant progress in eastern Ukraine. According to Russia’s defense ministry, Russian soldiers have taken control of the town of Kurakhove, 32km (20 miles) south of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian supplies base targeted for months of Russian advance. According to the ministry, the seizure will let Russian forces “at an accelerated pace” acquire the remaining Donetsk territory. Although the local military leadership defending Kurakhove admitted that Russian forces were targeting metropolitan areas, it claimed “measures to identify and destroy enemy assault groups” were under progress.
Four people with knowledge of the trip’s preparation have said that US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy has postponed a fact-finding trip to Kyiv and other European cities until after Trump’s inauguration on 20 January. The journey would have been the first…
