Russia top general said that all Ukrainian troops have been forced from parts of Russia’s Kursk region, which Moscow lost control of last year to a surprise Ukrainian incursion.
Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff for Russia’s Armed Forces, gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the news in a meeting Saturday, Peskov told Russian state news outlet Interfax.
In a statement, Putin congratulated the Russian soldiers and commanders and said that Kyiv’s incursion had “completely failed”.
“The complete defeat of our enemy along Kursk’s border region creates the right conditions for further successes for our troops and in other important areas of the front,” he said.
Ukrainian officials, however, denied the claim, saying the fighting was still continuing. “The statements of representatives of the high command of the aggressor country about the alleged end of hostilities in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation are not true,” Ukraine’s General staff said Saturday.
“The defensive operation of the Ukrainian Defence Forces in certain areas in the Kursk region continues. The operational situation is difficult, but our units continue to hold designated positions and carry out assigned tasks, while inflicting effective fire damage on the enemy with all types of weapons, including using active defense tactics,” it added.
The Ukrainian army stunned Russia in August 2024 by attacking across the border and taking control of an estimated 1,300 square kilometres of land. The country’s leaders believed the capture of Russian territory might help in any future peace negotiations, but their gains were slowly eroded and Ukrainian troops continued to lose control of the territory throughout early 2025.
The news comes as US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Vatican City on the sidelines of the pope’s funeral to discuss a potential ceasefire deal.
Russia admits presence of North Korean troops
Gerasimov also confirmed Saturday that North Korean soldiers fought against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region. Gerasimov said that they took part in “combat missions shoulder to shoulder with Russian servicemen during the repelling of the Ukrainian incursion” and “demonstrated high professionalism, showed fortitude, courage and heroism in battle.”
In the fall, Ukraine, the US and South Korea all said that North Korea, which previously had supplied weapons to Moscow, had deployed 10,000-12,000 of its troops to Russia to fight in Kursk.
Moscow and Pyongyang until now had responded vaguely to the South Korean and Western claims of the troop deployment, emphasising that their military cooperation conforms with international law, without directly admitting the presence of the North Korean forces in Russia.
Attacks on Ukraine continue
In Ukraine, three people were killed overnight by Russian attacks across the country, local officials also said Saturday.
Two people died in a strike on the town of Yarova in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, local governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on social media. Another person died in the Dnipropetrovsk region, said Gov Serhiy Lysak. Six people were injured, including an 88-year-old woman and an 11-year-old girl, he said.
Russia launched three missiles and 114 drones over Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force wrote in a statement Saturday. 66 drones were destroyed and a further 31 decoy drones failed to reach their destination.
Meanwhile, Russian air defences shot down 45 Ukrainian drones overnight, the country’s defence ministry said.
