#KURSK

Putin’s visit to Kursk is the first since Ukraine’s invasion seven months ago.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his army commanders were committed to “preserving the maximum of lives of our soldiers,” battling the Russian offensive in the Kursk pocket.

Russian troops have launched a large-scale offensive to retake swaths of the western Kursk region from Ukrainian forces, war bloggers and a senior Russian commander said on Saturday.

Ukraine is prepared to create a humanitarian corridor so that Russian citizens can leave Ukrainian-controlled territory in the Kursk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

Ukraine’s military said on Saturday that Russian forces had struck a dormitory in a part of Russia's Kursk region held by Ukrainian forces and nearly 100 people were believed to be trapped under rubble.

Kyiv and Seoul previously reported more than 10,000 N. Korean troops in Russia.

Marauding Russian troops looted homes and stores belonging to their own civilian population, the former regional governor, now a cabinet minister, has finally admitted.

Russia is attempting to push Ukrainian forces from its western Kursk region with tens of thousands of troops, Ukraine's top commander said on Monday, aiming to retake territory it lost in the summer, while its offensive in eastern Ukraine grinds on.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said on Thursday that the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces have made an incursion.

A Ukrainian news site citing intelligence sources says the servicemen left their positions on the border between the Bryansk and Kursk regions of Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Russian forces had tried to oust Ukrainian troops from positions in Russia's Kursk border region, but that Kyiv's forces were holding their lines.

A collapse of Putin’s rule could be triggered by a ‘not a very convincing victory’ in Ukraine.

U.S. President Joe Biden is looking forward to discussing Ukraine’s war strategy with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this month and Washington is working on a “substantial” new aid package, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Saturday.

Blunder sparks criticism from both Russian and Ukrainian commentators.

Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk has not only dented Moscow’s war narrative but has also sown doubt in the minds of the Russian elite, American and British spy chiefs have said. 

“Russia’s attempts to draw red lines simply do not work,” said the Ukrainian president.

One civilian was killed and four others injured in Russian shelling overnight on Ukraine’s Sumy region on the border between the two warring countries, the local Ukrainian administration said on Sunday.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is legitimate and covered by Kyiv’s right to self-defense, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told German weekly Welt am Sonntag in his first reaction to the advance into Russian territory.

The Kremlin is more concerned about pushing for further territorial advances in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region that in repelling a Ukrainian incursion into Russia, analysts quoted by the AP news agency have said.