Source : Perth Now news
All Ukrainian troops have been forced from Russia’s Kursk region, the Kremlin says.
Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff for Russia’s Armed Forces, gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the news in a meeting on Saturday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state news outlet Interfax.
Ukrainian officials disputed the claim.
In its morning update on Saturday, Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces continued to hold back Russian troops in the Kursk sector, pushing back against Russian claims that Ukraine had been fully dislodged from the territory.
In a statement, Putin congratulated the Russian soldiers and commanders and said 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.
The Ukrainian army stunned Russia in August 2024 by attacking across the border and taking control of an estimated 1300 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.
Gerasimov also confirmed on Saturday that North Korean soldiers fought against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region.
Gerasimov said 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 autumn, 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 co-operation conformed with international law, without directly admitting the presence of the North Korean forces in Russia.
The news comes as US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met in Vatican City on the sidelines of the pope’s funeral to discuss a potential ceasefire deal.
The presidents met at St Peter’s Basilica for about 15 minutes and agreed to continue negotiations later on Saturday, a Ukrainian presidential spokesman said.
