UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR Zelensky said Saturday his forces were “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukranian forces have been mounting a major ground offensive for more than 11 days.
His comments came a day after Moscow accused Ukraine of destroying a key bridge over a river in the border region, as they seeks to disrupt supply routes and the movement of Russian troops in the area.
Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrsky “reported on the strengthening of the positions of our forces in the Kursk region and the expansion of stabilised territory”, Zelensky said in a post on Telegram.
“As of this morning, we have replenished the exchange fund for our country,” Zelensky said, referring to Russian soldiers Ukraine has captured to be used in future prisoner swaps.
“I thank all the soldiers and commanders who are taking Russian soldiers prisoner and thus bringing the release of our soldiers and civilians held by Russia closer,” Zelensky said.
Ukraine claims to have taken control of more than 80 settlements in the lightning incursion, which caught Russia off guard almost two and a half years into its full-scale invasion its western neighbour.
The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday it had pushed back Ukrainian forces near three settlements in the Kursk region, and was searching for “mobile enemy groups” trying to pierce deeper into the country.
Russia opened a criminal probe on Saturday into two Italian journalists who reported on Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region, accusing them of crossing the border illegally.
Italian public broadcaster RAI aired a report on Wednesday showing the journalists drive into the region accompanied by Ukrainian military. Kyiv has been carrying out a major cross-border ground assault in the Kursk region since August 6.
Russia’s FSB security service said it had launched a case against “foreign journalists Simone Traini and Stefania Battistini, who illegally crossed the State Border of the Russian Federation”, according to the RIA news agency.
It said the journalists had “carried out video shooting in the territory of the settlement of Sudzha”, a town in the region that Ukraine’s forces claim to control.
The Italian reporters were shown driving in an armoured vehicle past Russian road signs before arriving in Sudzha, around 10 kilometres (six miles) from the border, where a journalist spoke to local people. Russia summoned Italy’s ambassador to Moscow, Cecilia Piccioni, to protest the report on Friday.
While the incursion has delivered a major morale boost to Kyiv, it appears to have had little impact on the larger battles raging in Russian-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky said on Saturday there had been “dozens of Russian assaults” on Ukrainian positions near the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, where Moscow has made a string of advances in recent weeks.
“Our soldiers and units are doing everything to destroy the occupier and repel the attacks,” Zelensky said, stressing the situation was “under control”.
Russia said Friday its forces had captured another village near Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian-held logistics hub that lies on a road supplying troops and towns across the eastern front.
Russian forces have been inching towards the town for months, taking a string of tiny villages over the past weeks.
The head of Pokrovsk’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, warned on Thursday that Russia was a little over 10 kilometres from the outskirts of the city and urged remaining residents to evacuate.
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