Entire battalion of Russian and North Korean troops slaughtered in attack on Ukraine-held village
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The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russian and North Korean soldiers were slaughtered in an attack on a Kursk village. He said that up to a "battalion of soldiers” of Vladimir Putin’s forces were lost during fighting in Makhnovka. Battalions are often made up of several hundred troops, but further details were not specified by Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader, referring to a report by a commander in the country’s military, said: “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops”.
Makhnovka is in Russia’s southern Kursk region, which Ukraine seized 1,000 square kilometres of in August last year. Around half of it has been recaptured and Russia has continued its efforts to grab the territory back as experts warn Ukraine is losing territory on a daily basis.
Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine and last year capitalised on weaknesses in Ukraine’s defences to slowly advance in eastern areas despite high losses of troops and equipment. Zelensky has said the incursion by Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk border region is a “very strong trump card” in any future peace negotiations.
With the war about to enter its fourth year next month, and with Mr Trump coming to power, the question of how and when Europe’s biggest conflict since the Second World War might end has come to the fore. The war’s trajectory is not in Ukraine’s favour. The country is short-handed on the front line and needs continued support from its Western partners.
