Claimed image, from Ukrainian military, of a North Korea soldier in the Kursk region in western Russia

Saturday’s Coverage: “Security Crisis” in Moldova After Cutoff of Russian Gas

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1301 GMT:

Reports are circulating that Ukraine has renewed its offensive in the Kursk region in western Russia.

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.

The head of the Presidential Office, Andrii Yermak, said there was “good news” as Russia “is getting what it deserves”.

Ukraine seized around 1,300 square km (500 square miles) of Kursk in a surprise cross-border incursion last August. Russian units, including North Korean troops, have struggled to reclaim around half of the territory.

Ukraine President Volodymyr 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”.

Russian military observers say the Ukrainian forces are moving northeast of Sudzha, captured by Ukraine last August, and are around 70 km (43 miles) from Kursk city.

The Kremlin has made no official comment; 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.

The Russian Defense Ministry blustered:

“Around 9:00 Moscow time, in order to stop the advance of Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counterattack with an assault group consisting of two tanks, a mine clearing vehicle, and twelve armored combat vehicles with paratroops towards Berdin village.

Artillery and aviation of the North group of [Russian] forces defeated the assault group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

UPDATE 1213 GMT:

Three civilians has been killed and at least 37 injured by Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day.

Air defense downed 61 out of 103 drones, and the other 42 decoy drones were lost to electronic counter-measures.

In Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region in south-central Ukraine, a 43-year-old man was killed and a 40-year-old woman injured by an artillery strike this morning. Three civilians were wounded on Saturday.

A 74-year-old man was killed by shelling near Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine.

In the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine, nine people were injured when Russian forces attacked the border town of Semenivka in the Chernihiv region with four guided aerial bombs.

Among the wounded were two children aged eight and 13. Two five-story buildings, houses, a hospital, administrative buildings, and other infrastructure were damaged.

In the Sumy region in the north, 10 civilians, including two children, were injured in the village of Svesa when a guided bomb destroyed part of a residential building (see Original Entry).

Four people were injured in the Donetsk region and nine in Kherson.

UPDATE 1109 GMT:

A Ukrainian drone strike has killed a Russian battaliation commander in the south of the country, claims Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR.

HUR released footage of the strike on December 29 on the car of Sergey Melnikov, killing him and his driver, in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Melnikov was the Chief of Staff of the Storm-Ossetia battalion, an assault unit within Russia’s 429th Motorized Rifle Regiment.

The Ukrainian military also claimed the killing of two Russian lieutenant colonels in a missile strike in the Kursk region in western Russia on December 30.

Lt. Col. Valery Tereshchenko and Lt. Col. Pavel Maletsky of the 76th Air Assault Division were among eight troops slain.

UPDATE 0826 GMT:

Russian commander Capt. Konstantin Nagayko, involved in a deadly missile strike in eastern Ukraine in 2023, is reportedly in critical condition after an explosion.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR said the blast was in Shuya, northeast of Moscow.

“He was on duty at his military unit and is now near death. Nagayko has multiple shrapnel injuries to nearly all organs, including the brain, and has undergone a craniotomy,” says HUR.

Nagayko, 29, was the battery commander of Russia’s 112th Rocket Brigade. In October 2023, the unit carried out a missile strike on a memorial service in a café in Hroza in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, killing 59 people.

The victims were 36 women, 22 men, and an 8-year-old boy.

UPDATE 0817 GMT:

Officials have declared a state of emergency in Russian-occupied Crimea, as workers try to clear tons of contaminated sand and earth after an oil spill from two aged tankers on December 15.

Russia’s proxy “mayor” of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said new traces of pollution required urgent elimination. The state of emergency gives authorities the power to order evacuation of homes.

The two tankers ran into trouble in the Kerch Strait during a storm. One sank and the other ran aground.

Workers have already cleared more than 86,000 metric tons of contaminated sand and soil.

UPDATE 0801 GMT:

The Russian outlet Izvestia says its reporter, freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov, was killed on Saturday by a Ukrainian drone strike.

The newspaper said Martemyanov was in a car travelling on a highway linking Russian occupied Donetsk city and Horlivka to the north in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukriane.

Russia’s State news agency Ria says two of its correspondents and two journalists working for a local publication in Donetsk were injured.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russian and North Korean forces are suffering heavy losses in battles in the Kursk region of western Russia.

Ukraine has held part of Kursk since a cross-border incursion on August 6. Russia has struggled to regain the region, even with the deployment of up to 11,000 North Korean troops since the autumn.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelensky said:

In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops. This is significant.

A Russian battalion can vary in size but is generally made up of several hundred troops.

Zelensky has previously said that around 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded. South Korean intelligence puts the number at 1,100.

The President also spoke of “fierce battles” along the entire 1,000-km (620-mile) frontline in eastern and southern Ukraine, as Russia persists with a 15-month offensive despite heavy casualties.

Amid gradual Russian advances in the Donetsk region in the east, the most difficult situation is near the city of Pokrovsk, said Zelensky.

A Ukrainian military spokesperson said earlier that Pokrovsk remained the “hottest” frontline sector, with Russian troops launching fresh attacks to bypass the city from the south and cut off supply routes to Ukraine’s troops.

Educator Among Latest Civilian Victims of Russia’s Strikes

Zelensky described rescue efforts after Russia’s latest missile and drone attacks across Ukraine, including on the town of Svesa in the Sumy region in the north.

At least seven people, including a 2-year-old girl, were injured in Svesa by a Russian strike on a multi-story residential building. Nearby blocks were also damaged.

Zelensky noted, “Yet another Russian attack on the lives of ordinary Ukrainian families.”

The President referred to the completion of the rescue effort in the Chernihiv region, also in the north, after a strike by three Russian ballistic missiles on Friday.

Among the victims was Oleksii Halionka, a 72-year-old Ukrainian educator and philologist, killed in his home. Four other civilians were injured.

Halionka, an associate professor at the Regional Institute of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, was the author of more than 100 publications.

In 2022, Russian forces destroyed his family home, including a personal library of 4,000 books. Since then, he lived in a small building on the same property.

“He had big plans for life this year, including building a new house,” his niece Liudmyla Halionka said. “He was a very kind and sensitive person. It’s a great loss for our family, for everyone.”

On Saturday, a 74-year-old man was slain by a Russian strike on a village in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine.