Russia said on Monday (6 Jan) that its forces had made significant gains in eastern Ukraine while repelling a new Ukrainian force offensive inside western Russia’s Kursk region (Russian oblast), sparking a second day of fierce fighting. Reuters reported.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces captured the town of Kurakhove, 32 km south of the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.
According to Reuters, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian troops had suffered heavy losses in five months of fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. There, the Russian forces lost close to 15,000 soldiers. No mention of Kurakhove. The Russian ministry said taking Kurakhove had been a goal for several weeks, allowing Russian forces to speed up their advance into Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The Russian ministry also said it captured the village of Dachenske, five miles from Pokrovsk, Ukraine.
Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of forces, told Reuters that Ukrainian forces continued to clash with Russian troops inside Kurakhov as of Monday morning (6 Jan).
According to the General Staff of Ukraine’s military, Russian forces launched 25 attacks on Ukrainian positions around Kurakhove but did not report the capture of the city.
Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, which tracks the front lines of the war using open source, has shown most of Kurakhove to be under Russian control, further strengthening Moscow’s claims.
Both sides are scrambling to improve their battleground positions before US President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised a swift end to the three-year-old war before or after the US election, takes office on January 20, according to Reuters.
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