Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that 74 settlements in Russia's Kursk region are currently under the control of the country's armed forces.
According to his words quoted on social network X, "despite the complex intense fighting," the AFU continues to advance in the region. Zelensky also said that the military had increased the "exchange fund," referring to capturing Russians to exchange for captured Ukrainians. He did not specify exactly how many Russian soldiers had been captured, but said there were "hundreds."
Earlier, AFU chief Oleksandr Syrskyy reported to the Ukrainian president that the size of the Russian-controlled territory is a thousand square kilometers: this is slightly less than the territory seized by Russian troops this year during offensives in Ukraine's Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. This estimate has no independent confirmation and is criticized by many military experts and analysts.
The day before, Alexei Smirnov, the interim governor of Kursk Region, admitted at a meeting with the Russian president that the AFU had captured 28 settlements in the region.
On Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry and the Chechen Akhmat unit in the Kursk region said the advance of Ukrainian troops had been halted and work was now underway to knock them out of the region. Vladimir Putin claims that "elite AFU units" are suffering "catastrophic" losses.
At the same time, several videos of the advance were published on Tuesday in pro-war Ukrainian Telegram channels, which said that the Ukrainian army had stopped the advance and was now working to knock them out of the region.
The Ukrainian media also regularly broadcast clips of dozens of allegedly surrendered soldiers of the regular Russian army. Many of them give their names and numbers of military units on camera and ask to be exchanged for soldiers of the Ukrainian Azov regiment who are in Russian captivity. Earlier, a number of participants in the military operation in Kursk Region on the Ukrainian side said that they would demand that the captured Russians be exchanged for the Azov soldiers, as they are allegedly subjected to cruel torture in Russia.
The Russian Defense Ministry has not commented in any way on the clips of the prisoners. Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat unit, admitted that the AFU had captured several Russian servicemen from Chechnya.
The Ukrainian army entered the territory of Russia's Kursk region on August 6. Since that day, fighting has continued in the region. The AFU claims control over dozens of settlements, including the district center of Suja. The Russian authorities either deny such information or do not comment on it. Nevertheless, a federal emergency regime has been declared in the Kursk region. More than 100 thousand people have been evacuated from the region at the moment. The evacuation is also taking place in the territories of Belgorod Region bordering Ukraine.
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