A Ukrainian soldier walks past the town hall in Sudzha, Kursk, Russia, August 16, 2024 (AP)
Sunday’s Coverage: Zelensky — Russian-North Korean Battalion Lost in Kursk
Map: Institute for the Study of War
UPDATE 1647 GMT:
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman says Russian troops have executed three Ukrainian soldiers in the latest mass killing of prisoners of war.
Dmytro Lubinets said the killings were near Neskuchne in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Friday. He said the Russians tied the hands of the POWs and shot them in the dead.
“We are once again witnessing atrocities that demonstrate the true face of the aggressor state,” he explained.
UPDATE 1636 GMT:
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has again accused Russia of causing the Christmas Day crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243, which killed 38 of 62 passengers and five crew.
Aliyev criticized Vladimir Putin for not admitting guilt during a meeting on Monday with surviving crew members and the families of victims.
“The blame for this disaster lies with representatives of the Russian Federation,” he emphaszied.
The flight, from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, Chechnya ws turned away and its GPS jammed. It crashed in Kazakhstan as it sought a safe place to land.
A preliminary investigation by Azerbaijani authorities attributed the crash to a missile launched by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system.
Putin offered condolences to Aliyev during a December 28 phone call but did not acknowledge Russian responsibility.
UPDATE 0750 GMT:
In a three-hour interview with interview with US podcaster Lex Fridman, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has said of Vladimir Putin, “He does not love his people. He loves only his inner circle.”
Responding to Fridman’s suggestion that Putin is a “serious person who loves his country,” Zelensky said, “What is his country? He happened to consider Ukraine his country.”
The President remarked that 780,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in Putin’s 34-month invasion:
He calls them all Russians, even those who don’t know how to speak Russian, on his territory of Russia, everything they’ve enslaved.
He’s sending 18-year-boys….It’s not that the fascists came to his country, and he needs to defend it. He came to ours, and he sends them.
Zelensky noted that Putin, after taking power in 2000, waged a destructive war against Chechnya, a republic of the Russian Federation:
Who are the Chechens? A different people: Another faith… Another language. One million people eliminated….How did he kill them – with love?
Zelensky said Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally, had apologized days after Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. He recalled a phone conversation:
He said, “It was not me, missiles were launched from my territory, and Putin was the one launching them.” These are his words, I have witnesses.
“And I apologize,” he said. “But believe me” — that’s what he told me — “Volodya, this is not me. I’m not in charge.”
Zelensky said he responded by calling Lukashenko “a murderer” for allowing the missile launches.
The Belarus leader has tried to draw lines over Minsk’s subservience to Putin, for example, not sending Belarusian troops into Ukraine.
Commenting on the impending change of US Government, Zelensky said he proposed to Donald Trump that Ukraine buy American weapons from $300 billion in frozen Russian assets.
This is one of the security guarantees. Take the money, what we need for our interior production, and we will buy all the weapons from the United States. We don’t need gifts from the United States.
It will be very good for your industry. For the United States. We will put money there. Russian money. Not Ukrainian. Not European. Russian money. Russian assets. They have to pay for this.
Zelensky did not reveal Trump’s reaction.
The President maintained his flattery of Trump, who takes office on January 20. Asked why Trump won November’s election, he replied, “He is strong….He is young…and his brain works.”
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine has renewed its offensive in the Kursk region in western Russia, five months after its initial cross-border incursion.
Both Ukrainian officials and Russian military observers confirmed the renewal on Sunday.
The head of the Presidential Office, Andrii Yermak, said there was “good news” as Russia “is getting what it deserves”.
The head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, Andrii Kovalenko, posted:
Russians are experiencing great concern in Kursk oblast because they were attacked in several directions and this came as a surprise to them. Defense Forces are at work.
Neither gave further details. The Ukrainian military said only that there were 42 combat clashes on Sunday in the area, with 12 continuing.
Russian military observers said the Ukrainian forces were moving northeast of Sudzha, captured by Ukraine last August, and were around 70 km (43 miles) from Kursk city.
They reported company-sized mechanized assaults, backed by battalion-sized armored vehicles, carrying out three waves of attacks northeast of Sudzha and southeast of Korenevo and a reinforced platoon-sized mechanized assault east of Sudzha.
Map: Institute for the Study of War
Ukraine seized around 1,300 square km (500 square miles) of Kursk in the surprise cross-border incursion . Russian units, including North Korean troops, have reclaimed more than half of the territory but have taken heavy casualties.
Ukraine President Zelensky said on Saturday that in two days of battles near the Kursk village of Makhnovka, “the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops”.
In a discussion with American podcaster Lex Fridman, Zelensky said 3,800 North Koreans have been killed or wounded in Kursk since their deployment in the autumn.
The Kremlin made no official comment on Sunday; however, Vladimir Putin has sent Gen. Yunus-Bek Yevkurov to Kursk for an emergency discussion with Acting Governor Alexander Khinshtein.
Khinstein said he had a “working meeting” with Yevkurov but did not give details.
Putin promoted Yevkurov to full Army General in December. The general is in charge of Russian border security and reportedly oversees the organization of Russian mercenary forces and military aid in Africa.
