Russia said on Monday (Jan 6) its forces had made important gains in eastern Ukraine while continuing to fend off a new Ukrainian offensive inside the Kursk region of western Russia, where a second day of fierce fighting was under way.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces had captured the town of Kurakhove, 32km south of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian logistics hub towards which Russian forces have been advancing for months.
The ministry said taking Kurakhove, which had held out for many weeks, would enable Moscow’s forces to step up the pace of their advance in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. It also said it had captured Dachenske, a settlement within five miles of Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, which tracks the front line using open sources, showed most of Kurakhove under Russian control. Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of forces said Russian forces continued to attack Kurakhove but Ukrainian forces were working to identify and repel Russian assault groups on that part of the front.
Both sides are fighting to improve their battlefield positions before US President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to bring a quick end to the nearly three-year-old war, takes office on Jan 20.
Ukraine’s main achievement in the past five months of fighting has been to capture and hold on to a slice of territory inside Russia’s Kursk region that could provide it with an important bargaining chip in possible peace talks.
Ukraine has not revealed details of the new offensive it launched in Kursk on Sunday, though a senior Ukrainian official has said Russia is “getting what it deserves”.
Russia’s defence ministry said the attempted Ukrainian breakthrough had been foiled and the main Ukrainian force had been destroyed near the settlement of Berdin, close to a road running northeast towards the city of Kursk.
A senior Russian commander said a further attack was expected.
“Of course, this is not the end. Now we are recording a concentration of enemy equipment in another direction and naturally we understand that he (Ukraine) will try to strike in this direction. Right now I won’t say where,” said Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of a Chechen unit fighting for Russia in Kursk.
