Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russian and North Korean troops suffered significant losses in Kursk, Zelensky says
Russian and North Korean forces suffered heavy losses near the village of Makhnovka in Russia’s southern Kursk region, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address yesterday, calling the losses “significant.”
Ukrainian and Western sources estimate about 11,000 North Korean troops are stationed in Kursk, where Ukrainian forces gained territory after a cross-border incursion in August.
Meanwhile, Russia called the drone strike that killed a Russian reporter in eastern Ukraine a “deliberate murder”.
Russian media outlet Izvestia said that a Ukrainian drone strike killed a reporter near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova described it as “another brutal crime in a series of bloody atrocities” of President Zelensky’s government “which openly resorts to terrorist methods to eliminate its ideological opponents”.
Data previously provided by the Committee to Protect Journalists counted at least 15 journalists killed since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
