Moscow estimates Ukrainian casualties in Kursk Region
Ukraine has lost more than 60,000 service members and hundreds of pieces of military hardware since launching its incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region in August 2024, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported.
Explaining the goal of the Ukrainian operation, officials in Kiev have repeatedly said they had hoped to force Moscow to divert resources away from other parts of the front line. However, Russia’s advances in Donbass have continued unabated in recent months.
In a statement on Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that over the past 24 hours Moscow’s forces had killed more than 270 Ukrainian troops, destroyed two tanks, over a dozen lighter armored vehicles, five artillery guns, and one electronic warfare system in Kursk Region.
According to Russian estimates, since early August 2024, when the Ukrainian military crossed the border into Kursk Region, it has lost more than 60,000 service members, 363 tanks, 263 infantry fighting vehicles, 213 armored personnel carriers, 435 artillery guns, 48 multiple launch rocket systems, including 13 US-made HIMARS and six MLRS, 20 air-defense systems, 108 electronic warfare systems, as well as hundreds of cars and dozens of pieces of other military equipment.
Last Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that its forces had repelled a localized Ukrainian offensive in Kursk Region. According to the statement, Russian artillery battered a Ukrainian military convoy, consisting of dozens of armored vehicles and hundreds of troops, near the town of Sudzha, which is the largest settlement controlled by Kiev in the area.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky told Britain’s Guardian newspaper that he hoped to use captured Russian territory as a bargaining chip in potential future negotiations with Moscow.
Commenting on his remarks on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed such a scenario as “impossible.”
“Russia has never discussed and will never discuss the issue of exchanging its territory,” the spokesman said.
“Of course, Ukrainian units will be expelled from [Russian] territory. All those who are not destroyed will be expelled,” the official stressed.
