(Bloomberg) -- Russia has redeployed some of its troops from southern Ukraine to help fight off Kyiv’s incursion into Kursk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday.
The cross-border operation has seen “some success” with Moscow moving 30,000 of its troops to the Kursk region, the country’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said at the same news conference with the president.
But Russia is still keeping its most capable soldiers for its push into the Donetsk region in Ukraine’s east where it seeks to capture the town of Pokrovsk, an important logistics hub for Kyiv’s forces, the general said. He didn’t clarify how many of those soldiers were redeployed from the front in Ukraine.
The Russian troop movements described by Syrskyi suggest only partial success in Ukraine’s attempt to blunt the Kremlin’s assault in the east. Moscow intends to seize the entire Donetsk region, which it illegally annexed almost two years without controlling the whole area.
Bloomberg was unable to independently verify Ukraine’s claims about Russian troop deployments. Moscow’s military commanders had no plan to send significant forces from Ukraine to the Kursk region, a person close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg last week.
“Donetsk region is Russia’s strategic goal,” Zelenskiy said, adding that Moscow had moved troops from the Zaporizhzhia Region rather than from its front in Donetsk.
Kyiv continues its incursion in the Kursk region of Russia, which caught Moscow off guard and has prompted tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes. One of the operation’s aims was to force Russia to move its troops from the Pokrovsk front to Kursk, Syrskyi said.
Ukraine’s military chief said that Kyiv now controls almost 1,300 square kilometers (502 square miles) and 100 settlements in Kursk region, where it has captured 594 Russian soldiers.
The fact that Putin didn’t order his forces invading Ukraine to redeploy to Kursk to dislodge the Ukrainian assault shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t care about protecting his population or borders, Zelenskiy said Saturday.
Russia continued its bombardment of Ukraine on Tuesday with drone and missile strikes, after Monday attack, which the country’s air defence said was the biggest since the start of the war. Both attacks damaged energy infrastructure and caused blackouts across the country.
--With assistance from Kateryna Chursina and Olesia Safronova.
(Updates with comments by President Zelenskiy in 1st-5th paragraphs)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
