Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Russian and North Korean forces had suffered heavy losses in the fighting. southern Russia “During the battles yesterday and today near one village, Makhnovka, in the Kursk region, the Russian army lost a battalion of North Korean infantry and Russian paratroops,” Zelenskyy said. “This means.” He did not provide any details. A cohort may vary in size, but is usually made up of several hundred soldiers. Ukrainian and Western estimates say 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces are occupying border territory after launching a mass cross-border offensive in August.
Zelenskyy also raged “fierce battles” along the entire 1,000-km (620-mile) front, with the most difficult situation near the city of Pokrovsk.. A Ukrainian military spokesman earlier said Pokrovsk remained on the “hottest” front as Russian forces attempted to launch new attacks near the town to bypass it from the south and block supply routes to Ukrainian forces. Ukraine estimates about 11,000 of 60,000 those in the city which was once the home of a mine that is the only coking coal for the once giant Ukrainian iron industry.
Russia on Saturday vowed to report after accusing Ukraine of firing US-supplied Atacms missiles in the border region of Belgorod yesterday., saying that all weapons will be pierced. Attack missiles have a maximum range of 300 kilometers (190 miles), according to publicly available data. President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview published last month that the US would “vehemently” use weapons against Ukraine, and He also called for an immediate ceasefire as Ukrainian goats placed at Trumpet start negotiations
The Russian media outlet Izvestia said on Saturday that a drone strike had killed its Ukrainian reporter, correspondent Alexander Martemyanov; near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. The paper said the car route connects Donetsk, the main Russian-held town of the Donetsk region, and the city of Horlivka to the north. Russia’s state-owned Ria news agency said two of its correspondents traveling with Martemyanov were injured in the accident, along with two journalists working for a local publication in Donetsk.
A Russian village in the northern Kharkiv region of Ukraine killed a 74-year-old man on Saturday, Regional manager Oleg Synegubov said. Moscow also hit a town in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, wounding seven and a two-year-old girl, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And in the southern part of Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia, a 10-year-old boy was killed and his parents were injured when his car hit a drone, the head of the Moscow region Yevgeny Balitsky said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry said on Saturday that it had captured the Ukrainian village of Nadiya, among the few seats in the eastern Luhansk region still under Kyiv rule. Moscow will seize nearly 4,000 square kilometers (1,540 square miles) in Ukraine by 2024, according to an AFP analysis, as Kyiv’s army struggles with long-term force shortages and exhaustion.
Russia declared a regional state of unrest on Saturday in Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, as workers cleaned tons of contaminated sand and soil from both sides of the Kerch river after the oil spill in the Pontus last month. Mikhail Razvozhaev, the appointed governor of the city of Sevastopol, Russia, said that new steps are needed to urgently eliminate pollution and declared a state of emergency in the city – to give the authorities more power to take quick decisions, to order citizens to leave their homes. Rescue workers have already cleared more than 86,000 metric tons of contaminated sand and soil, the accident ministry said on Saturday. Oil from two aging tankers who was struck by a storm on the 15th of December. one fell, and he fled.
Russia has arrested four teenagers on suspicion of plotting a “terror” attack on the city of Yekaterinburg, Russian state news agencies reported on Saturday. Russia’s domestic security – already fragile – has seen it deteriorate in recent years, as the Kremlin’s wealth channels seize on suspicions of colluding with Ukraine.
The Moldovan separatist region of Transnistria ordered a second day of rolling blackouts on Saturday, as it ordered a shutdown of Russian gas supplies to starve the pro-Moscow energy state. The tiny, shattered republic of neighboring Ukraine has been unable to provide heating and hot water to its residents since Wednesday, when Moscow has cut gas supplies to Moldavia in a pecuniary suit.