(Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Russian and North Korean forces suffered heavy losses in the battle south of Kursk.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that up to 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have taken over a large area after invading the border in August.
In his late-night video speech, Zelenskiy cited a report by Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi that the fighting took place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border.
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“In the battles yesterday and today near one village, Makhnovka, in the Kursk region, the Russian army was defeated by the North Korean army and the Russian army,” Zelenskiy said. “This is important.”
The president did not provide specific details. An army can vary in size but usually consists of several hundred soldiers.
Reuters could not independently verify the president's account.
Zelenskiy last week reported heavy North Korean losses in the Kursk region, saying that their forces were not protected by Russian forces fighting them.
He said North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid arrest and in some cases are killed by their own forces.
In his latest remarks, Zelenskiy also said “ferocious fighting” had engulfed the entire 1,000-km (620-mile) front line, with the situation particularly difficult near the town of Pokrovsk.
The Russian military, he said, “continues to use a large number of its personnel in attacks”.
A Ukrainian military spokesman earlier said that Pokrovsk remains a “very hot” frontline, as Russian forces begin an offensive near the city with the aim of bypassing it to the south and cutting supply routes to Ukrainian forces.
The city, home to the only mine that supplied coal to Ukraine's once-giant steel industry, had a population of about 60,000 before the war. Ukraine estimates that around 11,000 of them remain in the city.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Sandra Maler)
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