Russia claims that Ukraine is launching a “counterattack” in the Kursk Oblast

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last year that the Kursk operation had strengthened Kiev’s “exchange fund” – its negotiating position on a prisoner of war exchange – and diverted tens of thousands of Russian troops from the eastern front.

He said Saturday evening that “as many as a battalion of North Korean infantry and Russian airborne troops” had died in battles in the Kursk region that day and the day before.

However, according to an analysis of data from the AFP Institute for War Studies, Kiev has not yet managed to stop Moscow’s advances in Ukraine, which in 2024 were seven times greater than the year before.

AIRPORTS CLOSED

Since the beginning of the year, both Russia and Ukraine have regularly exchanged attacks.

Russia said on Sunday it had shot down dozens of Ukrainian drones overnight in shelling that damaged homes and triggered an airborne alert, while Kiev said Moscow had fired 103 drones into its territory.

Four Russian airports briefly halted traffic in the early hours of Sunday for “safety” reasons, forcing at least eight planes to divert, a spokesman for Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia said.