Russia announced today that it has captured one village each in Kursk region and the neighboring Ukrainian Sumy region. The report, published by the Russian Defense Ministry, states that the village of Lebedevka in the Sudzhansky district of the Kursk region, partially occupied by Ukraine, has been captured, BTA reports.
The announcement, which has not been independently verified, was made against the backdrop of increased pressure on Ukrainian forces in the border region of western Russia.
A representative of the security forces told TASS that the Russian army is now just over 10 kilometers from the town of Sudzha itself.
The Russian Defense Ministry also announced that the village of Novenkoye (Novenke in Ukrainian) in the neighboring Ukrainian Sumy region has been captured.
Reuters notes that Russian armed forces had largely withdrawn from this northeastern Ukrainian border region in April 2022 to shift their attention to eastern Ukraine.
Russian saboteurs and assault groups have penetrated the outskirts of the town of Sudzha in the Ukrainian-occupied part of the border Russian Kursk region, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said this morning, quoted by Ukrinform.
Media reports said that a hundred Russian soldiers approached Ukrainian positions in the town yesterday morning, having slipped through an unused gas pipeline. This is the pipe through which Russian gas was delivered to Europe through Ukraine. However, Kiev stopped the transit on January 1 of this year.
At noon, the Ukrainian General Staff announced, quoted by Ukrinform, that it had registered a total of 167 battles yesterday. Most of them took place in the Kursk region, where, according to the report, 44 Russian attacks were repelled.
Yesterday, Russia announced that it had launched a major offensive against Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region. Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry reported three recaptured villages there.
Most of the Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region are almost surrounded, with their main supply lines cut off, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing maps drawn from open sources.
The Ukrainian military launched a surprise offensive in the Russian border region in August last year in an attempt to divert Russian army forces and weaken their advance in eastern Ukraine, Reuters notes.
In recent months, however, Russian forces have been advancing slowly but methodically in Donbas. The Russian Defense Ministry reported today, quoted by TASS, about another captured village in the Donetsk region - Constantinople (Kostyantinopil in Ukrainian), near Velika Novosilka.
This town in the western part of the Donetsk region was captured by the Russian army in January.