Ukraine has captured 594 Russian soldiers during its three-week military operation in the Kursk region and has seized 100 settlements inside Russia, Kyiv’s commander-in-chief said on Tuesday.
Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said Moscow had redeployed 30,000 troops to the border region and they were trying to counterattack and to encircle Ukrainian forces but these attempts were being repelled.
Speaking at a conference in Kyiv, Syrskyi acknowledged that one of the objectives of the Kursk incursion was to divert Russian combat units away from the east of Ukraine.
In recent months Russian forces have been advancing. They are now about 7 miles (11km) from Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian army and transport hub, and are pressing on the town of Kurakhove.
Some troops had been shifted from the occupied south of the country, Syrskyi said. “The enemy is trying to withdraw units from other directions. But it is increasing its efforts in the Pokrovsk sectors.”
He said Russia was trying to disrupt supply lines. “The situation on the Pokrovsk front is fairly difficult … the enemy is using its advantage in personnel, weapons and military equipment. It is actively using artillery and aviation,” he admitted.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said decisions were being made to strengthen Ukraine’s forward positions in the Donetsk region. He described the Kursk incursion as “defensive”. It was being done to prevent Russia from seizing more Ukrainian land and there were no plans to annex Russian territory, he said.
The president’s comments came as Russia launched further deadly strikes on Ukraine with missiles and drones, a day after it carried out a “massive” attack on Ukraine’s power grid.
A strike on a hotel in the central city of Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday morning killed two people, the latest in a series of attacks on hotels across the central and eastern parts of Ukraine, while a further three people were killed in drone attacks on the city of Zaporizhzhia.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 10 ballistic missiles and 81 drones during the assault, and Ukrainian air defence had shot down five of the missiles and 60 of the drones.
Authorities in Kyiv said everything that had targeted the city had been shot down. Explosions were audible as the city’s air defences repelled the attack.
Serhiy Lisak, a regional official, said one of those injured in the Kryvyi Rih hotel strike, a 43-year-old woman, was in a critical condition in hospital. Another two people were missing and could still be under the rubble, he said in a post on Telegram.
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Monday’s Russian attack on Ukraine largely targeted the energy grid and killed at least seven people.
The attack triggered blackouts and water shortages, including in Kyiv where shops and businesses had to switch to generators on Monday afternoon and evening to maintain power. The state-owned energy body, Ukrenergo, said it was introducing emergency power cuts to help stabilise its systems.
Russia’s renewed attack on the energy grid, after a number of strikes in the spring damaged critical infrastructure, will be worrying for Ukraine as winter approaches.
The attack drew widespread condemnation from Kyiv’s foreign partners. The US president, Joe Biden, called it “outrageous”, while Germany’s foreign ministry said: “Once again, Putin’s Russia is saturating Ukraine’s lifelines with missiles.”
The Russian defence ministry confirmed it was targeting energy facilities on Monday, claiming in a statement that the energy grid was being used to aid Ukraine’s “military-production complex”.
Poland, a Nato member, claimed its airspace was violated during the barrage, probably by a drone. “We are probably dealing with the entry of an object on Polish territory. The object was confirmed by at least three radiolocation stations,” said Gen Maciej Klisz, the operational commander of the armed forces.
After Monday’s attacks, Zelenskiy issued a familiar call for allies to do more to protect Ukraine, suggesting that European air forces could help Kyiv down drones and missiles in the future. “In our various regions of Ukraine, we could do much more to protect lives if the aviation of our European neighbours worked together with our F-16s and together with our air defence,” he said in a video address.
A Reuters journalist remained in critical condition in hospital after being injured in a strike on Saturday, the news agency said on Monday evening. Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey was part of a six-person Reuters team staying at a hotel in Kramatorsk close to the frontline in eastern Ukraine when it was hit by a missile. Ryan Evans, a British security adviser working for the agency, was killed in the attack.
The Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk region has boosted Ukrainian morale after months of grinding stalemate or incremental losses. There were unconfirmed reports on Tuesday, from Russian Telegram channels, that there were further attempts at Ukrainian incursions into Russia at other points along the border, in Belgorod region, on Tuesday morning. It was not possible to immediately verify the reports.
The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, wrote on Telegram that the situation at the border was “difficult but under control”, noting “information that the enemy is trying to break through the border of the Belgorod region”. He said the Russian military was carrying out “planned work” and that people should trust only official sources, without elaborating on the reports.