Ukraine launches new attack in Kursk region of western Russia

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have gone on the offensive in the Kursk region of Russia, Ukrainian and Russian officials said Sunday, in what appeared to be an effort to regain the initiative there as they struggle to thwart relentless Russian assaults across eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine took about 500 square miles last summer in the Kursk region in a surprise incursion, but Russia clawed back about half of the territory in the months that followed.

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces had launched a large new assault featuring tanks, mine-clearing equipment and at least a dozen armored vehicles. The ministry claimed to have thwarted the attack.

Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the area who were reached by phone declined to discuss continuing operations beyond saying that Ukraine was on the offensive in parts of the Kursk region and that fierce fighting was raging there. The Ukrainian military high command said Sunday night that there were 42 “combat engagements” in the region over the past 24 hours and that 12 were still happening.

It was not possible to verify the claims by either side independently, and the scope of the Ukrainian assaults remained unclear.

Ukrainian and Western military analysts said that the attacks could be a deliberate attempt at misdirection, trying to force Russian troops to shore up defenses there in the hopes of weakening them on the front line in Ukrainian territory.

Russian forces continue to make costly but consistent gains in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. They are steadily grinding down a pocket of resistance around the town of Kurakhove and are also fighting to envelop the larger nearby city of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian soldiers and officials said.

Russian troops are now within 1 mile of a critical supply road leading to Pokrovsk, which had served as a vital logistics and transportation hub for Ukrainian forces in the region.

Although Ukraine now holds less than half of the territory it seized in the Kursk offensive last summer, it has managed in recent weeks to slow Russia’s advances despite repeated waves of Russian counterattacks, including assaults bolstered by thousands of North Korean soldiers.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sought to play down the significance of the Kursk incursion.