President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would urge allies to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses during a gathering in Germany this week, while each side said Kiev’s forces carried out new attacks in Russia’s Kursk region on Sunday.
Meanwhile, in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in Ukraine, no less than one person was killed and one other was injured, local authorities say, because of this of Russian shelling.
Dozens of partner nations will participate in the Ramstein Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday, Zelensky said, “including those that can help enhance our capabilities not only in missile defense , but also against guided bombs and Russian aircraft.”
“We will discuss this with them and we will continue to convince them,” Zelensky said in his evening speech on Saturday. “The task remains unchanged: strengthening our air defense.”
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin will be present at the meeting, originally scheduled for October, in the presence of US President Joe Biden. The session was postponed following Hurricane Milton, which hit the state of Florida.
The Biden administration is pushing to send as much military aid as possible to Ukraine before US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. During his election campaign, Trump claimed he could end the nearly three-year war one day, and his comments raised questions about whether Washington would continue to be Ukraine’s biggest – and most important – military supporter.
Last week, Zelensky said Trump was “strong and unpredictable” and those traits could be a deciding factor in his political approach to the war.
Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine last year progressed slowly in eastern areas despite large losses in troops and equipment. The trajectory of the war is not favorable for Ukraine, as the country suffers from a shortage of frontline workers and needs more support from its Western partners.
During Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk region, Zelensky said that the Russian i North Korean troops suffered heavy losses.
“In yesterday’s and today’s battles near just one village, Makhnovka, Kursk Oblast, the Russian army lost to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroopers,” he said. “This is significant.”
Zelensky said last month that 3,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded in Kursk, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August, dealing a blow to Russia’s prestige and forcing it to deploy some troops from eastern Ukraine.
The invasion did not significantly change the dynamics of the war, and military analysts say Ukraine has lost about 40% of the areas it originally captured.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Sunday that Ukraine has launched a new offensive in the Kursk Oblast. It claimed that its forces had pushed back Ukrainian troops, but some reports by Russian military bloggers indicated that Moscow’s forces were under significant pressure.
A statement from the ministry said Ukrainian forces attacked around 9 a.m. local time near the village of Berdin using two tanks, a mine-clearing vehicle and 12 armored fighting vehicles with paratroopers. He added that two Ukrainian attacks were repelled.
Advisor to the Ukrainian president Andriy Yermak said that “excellent news” has come from Kursk and that Russia “gets what it deserves”, while Andriy Kovalenko, head of the official Center for Countering Disinformation in Ukraine, said in Telegram that Russian troops were attacked in several places.
The Associated Press was not immediately able to verify the reports.
In other developments, local authorities said one person was killed and another wounded on Sunday by Russian shelling of the town of Nikopol in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Downstream of the Dnieper, at least six people were wounded when Russian troops shelled the city of Kherson, the capital of the region of the same name. Settlements on the western bank of the river are regularly bombarded from Russian-controlled territory on the opposite bank.
Local authorities said nine people were injured in a Russian bomb attack on the border town of Semenivka in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv Oblast on Saturday evening.
Moscow sent 103 drones to Ukraine on Sunday night, Ukrainian officials said. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, 61 drones were destroyed and 42 were missing, probably as a result of electronic interference.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported that 61 Ukrainian drones were shot down in western Russia on Sunday. No casualties were reported, but Rostov Oblast Governor Yuri Slyusar said falling pieces of drones damaged residential buildings and cars.
This story was reported by the Associated Press.
Elise Morton reported from London.
