Ukraine forces face 50,000 troops in Russia's Kursk

Ukraine is battling 50,000 troops in Russia’s border Kursk region, according to the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, while also scrambling to reinforce two besieged fronts in the east and bracing to meet an infantry assault in the south.

- ALISHA RAHAMAN SARKAR

The escalating fighting along a more than 600-mile front line is stretching Ukraine’s already outnumbered troops at a critical moment after Donald Trump won the US election, raising fears that the president-elect could cut the funding provided by Kyiv’s biggest military supporter.

Russia is reportedly sending thousands of soldiers to reclaim the border region of Kursk, where it has been fighting off an assault by the Ukrainian military since the summer. That attack has carved out a chunk of lens that President Zelensky said could be used as a bargaining chip.

“Following the order of their military leadership, they are trying to dislodge our troops and advance deep into the territory we control,” General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the chief of the Ukrainian military, said a day after The New York Times reported, citing US intelligence, that tens of thousands of North Korean troops were headed to Kursk.

General Syrskyi said the Kursk operation had drawn in crack Russian fighters and relieved pressure that would have been brought to bear on several important outposts in the eastern region of Donetsk, where Russia has been making gains at its fastest rate since 2022.