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Ukraine appears to launch new offensive in Russia's Kursk region

Greg Sullivan, Bloomberg News on

Published in News & Features

Ukraine appeared to launch a fresh offensive Sunday in Russia’s border region of Kursk, where Kyiv’s forces have held territory for several months.

Military bloggers and local media posted images of armored vehicles they said were moving near Sudzha toward Bolshoye Soldatskoye in the Kursk region.

Some bloggers, including the Rybar Telegram channel, which has 1.3 million subscribers, cautioned that the new operation could be a diversion.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in an update on Sunday its forces had repelled Ukraine’s offensive, characterizing it as an “assault group” led by two tanks and 12 armored combat vehicles.

Ukrainian military officials haven’t specifically confirmed the operation, but Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential administration, said on his Telegram channel Sunday that Russia was “getting what it deserves.”

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Propaganda, said in a Telegram post that Russians in Kursk were “experiencing great anxiety because they were attacked from several directions.”

Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Defense Minister General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov visited the region and met with the governor, Alexander Khinshtein, according to a post on the regional official’s Telegram channel.

 

Kyiv’s forces seized territory in the Kursk region during a surprise incursion that started in mid-August. Ukraine has ceded about half that territory back to Russia and has been at risk of losing the rest in a matter of months, U.S. officials said in late December.

Kyiv has indicated in the past that the Kursk operation had two major goals — to distract and potentially divert Moscow’s forces from eastern regions of Ukraine, where they continue to make incremental but persistent advances, and to capture Russian soldiers for prisoner swaps.

Ukrainian officials have also said they hoped to use the territory seized in Kursk as a bargaining chip in any negotiations with Russia. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has vowed to bring the war to a rapid end.

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(With assistance from Kateryna Chursina.)

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©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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