Russia’s military said Monday its forces captured an important town in eastern Ukraine, while Ukrainian officials cited tens of thousands of Russian casualties in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its control of the town of Kurakhove after several months of fighting for the logistics hub will allow the Russian military to more quickly advance elsewhere in the Donetsk region.
Ukrainian officials did not confirm the loss of Kurakhove on Monday, with the military’s General Staff saying in a late Monday report that Russian forces had launched attacks on Ukrainian positions in the town.
Russian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Monday that the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, which began five months ago, had caused 38,000 Russian military casualties.
“The Russians have deployed their strongest units to Kursk, including soldiers from North Korea. Importantly, all this manpower cannot now be redirected to other fronts – neither to the Donetsk region, nor against Sumy, the Kharkiv region or Zaporizhzhia,” Zelenskyy said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier Monday that North Korea and China are the “biggest ongoing drivers” allowing Russia to carry out its war in Ukraine, and that security assurances will need to be a part of potential future negotiations ending the conflict.
Speaking during a visit to South Korea, Blinken said North Korean supplies of artillery, ammunition and troops, along with Chinese support for Russia’s military industrial base are giving the Russian military the backing it needs to continue carrying out the fight it started in February 2022.
He said North Korea is already seeing a return on its involvement in the conflict in the form of Russian military equipment and training for North Korea troops.
“We believe it has the intent to share space and satellite technology with the DPRK,” Blinken said.
With only two weeks left in the Biden administration, the United States has been rushing to send remaining authorized aid to Ukraine amid uncertainty about how President-elect Donald Trump may approach the war.
Blinken said Monday the U.S. has been trying to make sure Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself, and to have the “strongest possible hand” at a future negotiating table with Russia.
“If there is going to be, at some point, a ceasefire, it’s not going to be, in Putin’s mind, ‘game over’,” Blinken said. “His imperial ambitions remain, and what he will seek to do is to rest, to refit, and eventually to re-attack.”
Blinken said it is necessary to have an “adequate deterrent in place so that he doesn’t do that, so that he thinks twice – three times – before engaging in any re-aggression.”
Ukraine’s military said Monday it shot down 79 of the 128 drones that Russian forces deployed overnight in attack targeting multiple Ukrainian regions.
The intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Sumy, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions, the Ukrainian air force said.
Officials in Cherkasy reported damage to residential buildings and a grain warehouse from falling drone debris.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it destroyed 12 Ukrainian aerial drones, all in areas along the Russia-Ukraine border.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region, said the attacks injured three people and damaged several residential buildings.
Some information for this report was provided by from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
