KYIV: Ukraine said Tuesday its forces struck a Russian military \u201ccommand post\u201d in Russia\u2019s Kursk region during \u201ccombat operations,\u201d while backtracking on a claim it had launched a fresh offensive in the border area.
\nRussia\u2019s army said over the weekend that Kyiv was mounting a \u201ccounter-attack\u201d in the region, where Ukraine\u2019s forces have held onto a swathe of territory since a shock incursion last August.
\nIn an English-language statement, Kyiv\u2019s army said it had launched a \u201chigh precision\u201d strike near the village of Belaya \u2014 south-east of Kyiv-controlled territory \u2014 without saying if it had used Western long-range weapons.
\nAn original version of the statement, published by the Ukrainian General Staff on its Telegram account, said Ukraine had launched \u201cnew offensive operations\u201d in the Kursk region.
\nThe post was then edited and the reference to a \u201cnew offensive\u201d removed.
\n\u201cThis strike is an integral part of the combat operations of units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, which conduct combat operations\u201d in the Kursk region, the updated statement said.
\nPro-Kremlin military bloggers have reported a powerful new Ukrainian offensive, but Kyiv had not commented on those reports, only saying in regular daily briefings that fighting in the region was ongoing.
\nPresident Volodymyr Zelensky had on Monday also alluded to fighting in the Kursk region in his evening address, stating that Kyiv was \u201cmaintaining a buffer zone on Russian territory\u201d and \u201cactively destroying Russian military potential there.\u201d
\nIt is not clear if Ukraine had advanced much in the region, but the assault would come nearly three years into Moscow\u2019s invasion and two weeks before US President-elect Donald Trump will return to the White House.
\nTrump has vowed to begin talks to end the Ukraine war and Kyiv\u2019s hold in Kursk could influence any negotiations.
\nUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Ukraine\u2019s \u201cposition in Kursk\u201d would \u201cfactor in any negotiation that may come about in the coming year.\u201d
\nUkraine launched a surprise incursion into the western border region in August 2024, before Russia repelled some attacks, including with the help of North Korean soldiers sent by Pyongyang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: Ukraine said Tuesday its forces struck a Russian military \u201ccommand post\u201d in Russia\u2019s Kursk region during \u201ccombat operations,\u201d while backtracking on a claim it had launched a fresh offensive in the border area. Russia\u2019s army said over the weekend that Kyiv was mounting a \u201ccounter-attack\u201d in the region, where Ukraine\u2019s forces have held onto …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75343,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75337\/revisions\/75343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}